Through an experience that simultaneously involved my sensibility and intelligence, I realized early on that the imaginative life, however morbid it might seem, is the one that suits temperaments like mine. The fictions of my imagination (as it later developed) may weary me, but they don't hurt or humiliate. Impossible lovers can't cheat on us, or smile at us falsely, or be calculating in their caresses. They never forsake us, and they don't die or disappear. --The book of Disquiet
Fernando PessoaI am nothing. I'll never be anything. I couldn't want to be something. Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.
Fernando PessoaI'm something that I used to be. I'm never where I feel I am, and if I seek myself, I don't know who's seeking me. My boredom with everything has numbed me. I feel banished from my soul.
Fernando PessoaWe may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work thatโs finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbour whoโs crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes itโs even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. Thatโs enough for me, or it isnโt enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.
Fernando Pessoa