What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Writers, you know, are the beggars of Western society.

We are condemned to kill time, thus we die bit by bit.

To love is to undress our names.

Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

The Mexican...is familiar with death. [He] jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love.

We must cultivate and defend particularity, individuality, and irregularity-life. Human beings do not have a future in the collectivism of bureaucratic states or in the mass society created by capitalism. Every system, by virtue as much of its abstract nature as of its pretension to totality, is the enemy of life. As a forgotten Spanish poet, José Moreno Villa, put it with melancholy wit: "I have discovered in symmetry the root of much iniquity."