Contemporary man has rationalized the myths but he has not been able to destroy them.

— Octavio Paz

Death and birth are solitary experiences. We are born alone and we die alone. When we are expelled from the maternal womb, we begin the painful struggle that finally ends in death.

— Octavio Paz

Deserve your dream.

— Octavio Paz

Every text is unique and, at the same time, it is the translation of another text. No text is entirely original because language itself, in its essence, is already a translation: firstly, of the non-verbal world and secondly, since every sign and every phrase is the translation of another sign and another phrase. However, this argument can be turned around without losing any of its validity: all texts are original because every translation is distinctive. Every translation, up to a certain point, is an invention and as such it constitutes a unique text.

— Octavio Paz

Everything is language.

— Octavio Paz

Horror immobilizes us because it is made of contradictory feelings: fear and seduction, repulsion and attraction. Horror is a fascination... Horror is immobility, the great yawn of empty space, the womb and the hole in the earth, the universal Mother and the great garbage heap... With horror, we cannot have recourse to flight or combat, there remains only Adoration or Exorcism.

— Octavio Paz

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

I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases from that dialogue. What word could it be, of which I was only a syllable? Who speaks the word? To whom is it spoken?

— Octavio Paz

I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.

— Octavio Paz

I went to the little window and inhaled the country air. One could hear the breathing of the night, feminine, enormous.("The Blue Bouquet")

— Octavio Paz