I am the suburb of a non-existent town, the prolix commentary on a book never written. I am nobody, nobody. I am a character in a novel which remains to be written, and I float, aerial, scattered without ever having been, among the dreams of a creature who did not know how to finish me off.
Fernando PessoaSilence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. Iโm sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I donโt know what I feel or what I want to feel. I donโt know what to think or where I am.
Fernando PessoaThere is no happiness without knowledge. But knowledge of happiness is unhappy; for knowing ourselves happy is knowing ourselves passing through happiness, and having to, immediatly at once, leave it behind. To know is to kill, in happiness as in everything. Not to know, though, is not to exist.
Fernando PessoaAll that I've lived I've forgotten, as if I'd vaguely heard it. All that I'll be reminds me of nothing, as if I'd lived and forgotten it.
Fernando PessoaI asked for very little from life, and even this little was denied me. A nearby field, a ray of sunlight, a little bit of calm along with a bit of bread, not to feel oppressed by the knowledge that I exist, not to demand anything from others, and not to have others demand anything from me - this was denied me, like the spare change we might deny a beggar not because we're mean-hearted but because we don't feel like unbuttoning our coat.
Fernando Pessoa