“My source of inspiration is reality. But an integral reality: the outer world and the inner world, what is seen and what is imagined.”

Original: Mi fuente de inspiración es la realidad. Pero una realidad integral del mundo exterior y del mundo interior. De lo visto y lo imaginado. — Defining inspiration as a union of observation and imagination · Confesiones literarias, Cuadernos de Poesía, 1941 (Spanish)

• Creativity
• Experience
• Imagination

“Aesthetic theories have always been made from works of art, never the other way round.”

Original: Las estéticas se han hecho siempre sobre las obras de arte, y nunca viceversa. — Arguing that artistic theory should arise from artworks rather than dictate them · Article, Los jóvenes del Ultra, 1919 (Spanish)

• Art
• Creativity
• Criticism

“To write poems in order to justify an aesthetic theory, however good it may be, is completely absurd and monstrous.”

Original: Escribir poemas para justificar una teoría estética, por buena que sea, es completamente absurdo y monstruoso. — Insisting that poems should not be manufactured merely to prove theories · Article, Los jóvenes del Ultra, 1919 (Spanish)

• Creativity
• Criticism
• Poetry

“Art is not a matter of rhetoric, nor even of literature, but of personality.”

Original: El arte no es cosa de retórica ni aun de literatura, sino de personalidad. — Locating the essential source of art in the individual creator · Lecture, Los poetas de hoy (Spanish)

• Art
• Creativity
• Individuality