Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa, born Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa, was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher, described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th century and one of the greatest poets in the Portuguese language. He also wrote in and translated from English and French...
NationalityPortuguese
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth13 June 1888
CityLisbon, Portugal
CountryPortugal
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.
When all by myself, I can think of all kinds of clever remarks, quick comebacks to what no one said, and flashes of witty sociability with nobody. But all of this vanishes when I face someone in the flesh: I lose my intelligence, I can no longer speak, and after half an hour I just feel tired. Talking to people makes me feel like sleeping. Only my ghostly and imaginary friends, only the conversations I have in my dreams, are genuinely real and substantial.
Everything is theater.
All 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.
But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?
The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.
We live by action—by acting on desire. Those of us who don't know how to want—whether geniuses or beggars—are related by impotence.
Life is whatever we conceive it to be.
Blessed are those who entrust their lives to no one.
I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.
Ah, it's my longing for whom I might have been that distracts and torments me!
Writing is like paying myself a formal visit…
This world is for those who are born to conquer it, Not for those who dream that are able to conquer it, even if they're right.
I 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.