Mexican - Poet | March 31, 1914 - April 19, 1998
I think we all have our own personality, unique and distinctive, and at the same time, I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts.
Octavio Paz
GreatTimePersonalitySilenceWind
The modern tradition is the tradition of revolt. The French Revolution is still our model today: history is violent change, and this change goes by the name of progress. I do not know whether these notions really apply to art.
ChangeTodayHistoryArtProgress
When hypocrisy is a character trait, it also affects one's thinking, because it consists in the negation of all the aspects of reality that one finds disagreeable, irrational or repugnant.
CharacterThinkingRealityHypocrisy
Deserve your dream.
MotivationalDreamDeserveYour
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two.
ChangeWisdomTwoLiesBetweenNor
Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.
LoveLove IsSucceedSurrenderBeing
The relations between rhetoric and ethics are disturbing: the ease with which language can be twisted is worrisome, and the fact that our minds accept these perverse games so docilely is no less cause for concern.
EthicsLanguageRhetoricAcceptEase
Surrealism is not a poetry but a poetics, and even more, and more decisively, a world vision.
VisionPoetryWorldMoreEven
The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.
CriticismTraditionNewOldContrast
The truth is that the history of Mexico is a history in the image of its geography: abrupt and tortuous. Each historical period is like a plateau surrounded by tall mountains and separated from the other plateaus by precipices and divides.
TruthHistoryMountainsTruth Is
Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.
AloneWorldWallOpeningTransparent
If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
InnovationTimeUniqueNewBegin
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