I know no pleasure like that of books, and I read very little. Books are introductions to dreams, and no introductions are necessary for one who freely and naturally enters into conversation with them. I've never been able to lose myself in a book; as I'm reading, the commentary of my intellect or imagination has always hindered the narrative flow. After a few minutes it's I who am writing, and what I write is nowhere to be found.
From "Text 417" in The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
Fernando Pessoa & Co.:
Selected Poems
by Fernando Pessoa
“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.”
― Fernando Pessoa
This poem demonstrates Pessoa's art better than any words I may conjure.
Where There Are Roses
We Plant Doubt
Where there are roses we plant doubt.
Most of the meaning we glean is our own,
And forever not knowing, we ponder.
Foreign to us, capacious nature
Unrolls fields, open flowers, ripens
Fruits, and death arrives.
I'll only be right, if anyone is right,
When death at last confounds my mind
And I no longer see,
For we cannot find and should not find
The remote and profound explanation
For why it is we live.
from the Odes
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