QuoteProject
In each verse, a decision awaits us, and we can't choose to close our eyes and let instinct work on its own. Poetic instinct consists of an alert tension.
Octavio Paz
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote emphasizes the importance of conscious decision-making in creativity, suggesting that true artistic expression requires awareness and intention.

Octavio Paz highlights that every moment in the creative process is a choice rather than a passive flow of inspiration. The phrase 'poetic instinct' refers to the deep, attentive awareness needed to navigate these choices, suggesting that creativity is a blend of instinct and conscious effort, requiring both alertness and intention.

Themes

ArtCreativityDecisionInstinctAwareness

In practice

Example use cases

An artist can share this quote during a workshop to emphasize the importance of intentional decision-making in their work.

More from Octavio Paz

Solitude lies at the lowest depth of the human condition. Man is the only being who feels himself to be alone and the only one who is searching for the Other.
Octavio PazRead
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Octavio PazRead
The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the Press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it he cannot grow or mature.
Octavio PazRead
Poetry is not a genre in harmony with the modern world; its innermost nature is hostile or indifferent to the dogmas of modern times, progress and the cult of the future.
Octavio PazRead
If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time.
Octavio PazRead
Man, even man debased by the neocapitalism and pseudosocialism of our time, is a marvelous being because he sometimes speaks. Language is the mark, the sign, not of his fall but of his original innocence. Through the Word we may regain the lost kingdom and recover powers we possessed in the far-distant past.
Octavio PazRead

Similar quotes

Stand up for yourself and fight for your right to be the artist that you want to be. There's plenty of pressure from outside; people tell you how to dress and how to sing or what to sing, but I always felt like if I'm going to fail or succeed, I want to do it on my own terms.
Tracy ChapmanRead
The purpose of theatre is... making an event in which a group of fragments are sudde nly brought together... in a community which, by the natural laws that make every community, gradually breaks up... At certain moments this fragmented world comes together and for a certain time it can rediscover the marvel of organic life ... The marvel of being one.
Peter BrookRead
No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.
Vladimir NabokovRead
When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw. And drawing, for me, is the beginning of everything.
Ellsworth KellyRead
From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.
Adrian FrutigerRead
Everybody comes to film differently; everybody has different backgrounds. Just find whatever your lane is naturally. Don't try to force yourself into someone else's vision or try to tell a story that you're not passionate about.
F. Gary GrayRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.