Octavio Paz Quotes

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.

I definitely believe that art is the best way to produce social change.

Anyone who does anything creative is always gonna want to change.

Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before.

Every time that I wanted to give up, if I saw an interesting textile, print what ever, suddenly I would see a collection.

I enjoy trying to inspire myself. I enjoy the artistic side of everything. Music, art, fashion, everything. I just like to be on the cutting edge of it. I'm into designing houses and interior design. I like change. I like creating things out of nothing.

Everything is raw material to me. Land is raw material... I take one form and transform it into other forms.

Artists rarely do the same thing over and over again. Art is about the new, doing things in a new way.

I think that art has the ability to capture people's imaginations and make them think that more is possible.

I've learned that you can do something great, but you have to continue reinventing yourself as an artist. So by the time someone else is copying your style, you have something else to offer your audience.

All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time, and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil.

As an artist, you find at different times you want to do different things.

I think the best artists find ways to reinvent themselves. They find new ways to tell their stories, or they find new stories to tell.

My goal is to change the art industry.

Culture in America and everywhere else comes from the suffering, from those who don't want the old ways. They want to bring in the new, whether it's the ballet, when it started, or Shakespeare.

If you're any kind of artist, you've got to ... keep opening yourself to new possibilities.

I had a visit from an artist friend who basically said, "Your paintings are wonderful. Now stop." It did resonate with me. It hit on the percolating need for change that was already there. I got a little push. I did a group of the paintings early on that were among the best. It was sort of beginner's luck with these.

I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.

Art has to keep moving and discovering to stay alive.

Being creative is at the heart of being human and of all cultural progress.

Variation does not mean evolution. If an artist varies his mode of expression this only means that he has changed his manner of thinking, and in changing, it might be for the better or it might be for the worse.

I almost feel like its an obligation to not further the status quo if you become somebody with influence and exposure. I dont want to paint the same painting again. I dont want to make the same sculpture again. Why shouldnt a big movie studio be able to make those small independent kinds of pictures? Why not change it up?

I think something happens with age. And I find this really a lot in what I read from certain art critics: For people who are all about change-people who are supposed to be intellectually and culturally drawn to the idea of change and how the voice of a creative person affects the world on a bigger scale than just the canvas-I would expect a person in that position to have that open mind. It's only a sign of age that they become so locked in their own rules that they forget that this is what it's all about.

Progress comes by experiment, and this from ennui that leads to voyages, wars, revolutions, and plainly to change in the arts of expression; that cries out to the imagination, and is the nurse of the invention whereof we term necessity the mother.

Young people can create beautiful things.