My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.

I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.

pg.9 "In my heart there's a peaceful anguish, and my calm is made of resignation.

The sea with an end can be Greek or Roman: the endless sea is Portuguese.

I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.

A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.