All Iโve ever done is dream. That, and only that, has been the meaning of my existence. The only thing Iโve ever really cared about is my inner life. My greatest griefs faded to nothing the moment I opened the window onto my inner self and lost myself in watching. I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.
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 PessoaI seek and donโt find myself. I belong to chrysanthemum hours, neatly lined up in flowerpots.
Fernando PessoaIโm beginning to know myself. I donโt exist. Iโm the space between what Iโd like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
Fernando PessoaTo say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming โ like worms when a rock is lifted โ under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.
Fernando Pessoa