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When a society decays, it is language that is first to become gangrenous. As a result, social criticism begins with grammar and the re-establishing of meanings

Octavio Paz

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Octavio Paz
Age: 84 †
Born: 1914
Born: March 31
Died: 1998
Died: April 2
Diplomat
Essayist
Lyricist
Philosopher
Poet
Politician
Translator
Writer
Mexico City
Mexico
Octavio Paz Lozano
Social
Grammar
Become
Decay
Firsts
Begins
First
Criticism
Result
Results
Decays
Society
Establishing
Language
Meanings

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The purpose of poetry is to restore to mankind the possibility to wonder.
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Poet: gardener of epitaphs.
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Reality is a staircase going neither up nor down, we don't move today is today, always is today.
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There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.
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Every moment is nothing without end.
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Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness. And the supernatural is the supreme otherness. This is perhaps the most noble aim of poetry, to attach ourselves to the world around us, to turn desire into love, to embrace, finally what always evades us, what is beyond, but what is always there – the unspoken, the spirit, the soul.
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I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.
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Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.
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The world is born when two people kiss
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What is art? A violet. Is that all? An artistic style is a living entity, a continuous process of invention. It can never be imposed from without born of the profoundest tendencies within a society, its direction is to a certain extent unpredictable, in much the same way as the eventual configuration of a tree's branches.
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The woman who died night after night and her dying was a long goodbye, a train that never left.
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Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
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Solitude is the profoundest fact
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A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry.
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Cubism had been an analysis of the object and an attempt to put it before us in its totality both as analysis and as synthesis, it was a criticism of appearance. Surrealism transmuted the object, and suddenly a canvas became an apparition: a new figuration, a real transfiguration.
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Man does not speak because he thinks he thinks because he speaks. Or rather, speaking is no different than thinking: to speak is to think.
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To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes to hear it is to see it with our ears.
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By diminishing the value of silence, publicity has also diminished that of language. The two are inseparable: knowing how to speak has always meant knowing how to keep silent, knowing that there are times when one should say nothing.
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Ruy-Sanchez's works of fiction are always amazing: adventure, poetry and intelligence in a new geometry of words... His writing has nerve and agility, his intelligence is sharp without being cruel, his mood is sympathetic without complicity.
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What characterizes a poem is its necessary dependence on words as much as its struggle to transcend them.
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