Born in Mexico City, poet Octavio Paz (1914-1998) wrote with unmistakable passion. He called writers the "guardians of language" and described poetry as "the secret religion of the modern age."

"Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition," he said. "Man is the only being who knows he is alone."

He let his poetry express the deep loneliness in his soul. Influenced by the surrealist movement, Paz published his first collection of poems while still a teenager. "Deserve your dream," he urged.

Paz celebrated the spirit of Mexicans in his writing. He produced over 40 volumes of poetry and essays and is best known for the eloquent Labyrinth of Solitude Life (1950), the cultural analysis of post-conquest Mexico, and The Sun Stone, the long poem based on the Aztec calendar.

"Seeing the world is spelling it," said the man who merged philosophy, religion, art, and politics.

In 1990, he became the first Mexican to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. "If each of my words were a drop of water, you would see through them and glimpse what I feel: gratitude, acknowledgement," he said.

"Wouldn't it be better to turn life into poetry rather than to make poetry from life," he asked.

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