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101 " ...you are you and your body of steam,you and your face of night,you and your hair, unhurried lightning,you cross the street and enter my forehead,footsteps of water across my eyes,listen to me as one listens to the rain "
― Octavio Paz , A Tree Within
102 " I heard my blood, singing in its prison,and the sea sang with a murmur of light,one by one the walls gave way,all of the doors were broken down,and the sun came bursting through my forehead,it tore apart my closed lids,cut loose my being from its wrappers,and pulled me out of myself to wake mefrom this animal sleep and its centuries of stone "
― Octavio Paz , Sunstone/Piedra De Sol
103 " Bodies are visible hieroglyphs. Every body is an erotic metaphor, and the meaning of all these metaphors is always the same: death. "
― Octavio Paz
104 " El amor es intensidad y por esto es una distensión del tiempo: estira los minutos y los alarga como siglos. "
105 " Pues apenas el tiempo se divide en ayer, hoy y mañana, en horas, minutos y segundos, el hombre cesa de ser uno con el tiempo, cesa de coincidir con el fluir de la realidad. "
― Octavio Paz , The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings
106 " En lugar de interrogarnos a nosotros mismos,¿no sería mejor crear, obrar sobre una realidad que no se entrega al que la contempla, sino al que es capaz de sumergirse en ella? "
107 " Between going and staying the day wavers,in love with its own transparency.The circular afternoon is now a baywhere the world in stillness rocks.All is visible and all elusive,all is near and can't be touched.Paper, book, pencil, glass,rest in the shade of their names.Time throbbing in my temples repeatsthe same unchanging syllable of blood.The light turns the indifferent wallinto a ghostly theater of reflections.I find myself in the middle of an eye,watching myself in its blank stare.The moment scatters. Motionless,I stay and go: I am a pause. "
108 " History has the cruel reality of a nightmare, and the grandeur of man consists in his making beautiful and lasting works out of the real substance of that nightmare. Or, to put it another way, it consists in transforming the nightmare into vision; in freeing ourselves from the shapeless horror of reality--if only for an instant--by means of creation. "
109 " Eroticism is, above all else, exclusively human: it is sexuality socialized and transfigured by the imagination and the will of human beings. The first thing that distinguishes eroticism from sexuality is the infinite variety of forms in which it manifests itself. eroticism is invention, constant variation, sex is always the same.In every erotic encounter there is an invisible and ever-active participant: imagination, desire.Eroticism is first and foremost a thirst for otherness.Many years ago I wrote: love is a sacrifice without virtue. Today I would say: love is a bet, a wild one, placed on freedom. Not my own: the freedom of the other. "
110 " Es indudable que hoy se lee más que antes. ¿Se lee mejor? Lo dudo. La distracción es nuestro estado habitual. No la distracción del que se aleja del mundo para internarse en el secreto y movedizo país de su fantasía, sino la de aquel que está siempre fuera de sí, perdido en la mediocre e insensata agitación cotidiana. Mil cosas solicitan a la vez nuestra atención y ninguna de ellas logra retenernos; así la vida se nos vuelve arena entre los dedos y las horas humo en el cerebro. "
111 " To become aware of our history is to become aware of our singularity. "
112 " [Eroticism is] the poetry of the body, the testimony of the senses. Like a poem, it is not linear, it meanders and twists back on itself, shows us what we do not see with our eyes, but in the eyes of our spirit. Eroticism reveals to us another world, inside this world. The senses become servants of the imagination, and let us see the invisible and hear the inaudible. "
113 " He is astonished at the fact of his being, and this astonishment leads to reflection: as he leans over the river of his consciousness, he asks himself if the face that appears there, disfigured by the water, is his own. The singularity of his being, which is pure sensation in children, becomes a problem and a question "
114 " The past reappears because it is a hidden present. "
115 " العالم يتغيّر عندماينظُرُ شخصانِ إلى بعضهمافيجدان نفسَيْهِما "
116 " ¿Y no es extraordinario que, desparecidas las causas, persistan los efectos? ¿Y que los efectos oculten a las causas? "
117 " Mato de hambre al amor, para que devore lo que encuentre. "
― Octavio Paz , ¿Águila o Sol?
118 " al entrar en ti mismo no sales del mundo "
119 " ...it becomes clear that chronometric time is a homogeneous succession lacking all particularity. It is always the same, always indifferent to pleasure or pain. Mythological time, on the other hand, is impregnated with all the particulars of our lives: it is as long as eternity or as short as a breath, ominous or propitious, fecund or sterile. "
120 " The BridgeBetween now and now,between I am and you are,the word bridge.Entering ityou enter yourself:the world connectsand closes like a ring.From one bank to another,there is alwaysa body stretched:a rainbow.I'll sleep beneath its arches. "