Fernando Pessoa Quotes

I can be indecisive about things - and the less important something is, the more indecisive I am.

Overthinking is often a product of underdoing.

If you're too smart it can limit you because you spend so much time thinking that you don't do anything.

I think the worst and most insidious procrastination for me is research. I will be looking for some bit of fact or figure to include in the novel, and before I know, I've wasted an entire morning delving into that subject matter without a word written.

When men think much, they can rarely decide.

I often obsess so much about things that I can't get done, that I ruin other things.

Don't think about your errors or failures; otherwise, you'll never do a thing.

I always thought writer's block was something that prats used as an easy excuse for not doing any work.

He suffered from paralysis by analysis.

I'm the kind of person who can paralyze myself very easily by over-thinking decisions.

Or shall I go out as a light does, not first blown out by the wind, but grown tired and weary of itself - a burnt out light? Or finally, shall I blow myself out, so as not to burn out?

Perfectionism has nothing to do with getting it right. It has nothing to do with fixing things. It has nothing to do with standards. Perfectionism is a refusal to let yourself move forward. It is a loop-an obsessive, debilitating closed system that causes you to get stuck in the details of what you are writing or painting or making and to lose sight of the whole.

The only way out is the way through, just as you cannot escape death except by dying. Being unable to write, you must examine in writing this being unable, which becomes for the present -henceforth?- the subject to which you are condemned.

Advice to writers: Sometimes you just have to stop writing. Even before you begin.

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try.

While some of us act without thinking, too many of us think without acting.

Someone shouts, "Enough!" and I think too much and nothing at all.

Sometimes the space between knowing what to do and actually doing it is a very short walk. Other times it is an impossible expanse.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

Maybe it was inertia -or worse, fear- that was keeping me in the same place.

The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.

It's so hard when contemplated in advance, and so easy when you do it.

My worst character flaw that I'm conscious of is that I tend to think my way into circles instead of resolving anything. It's paralyzing and boring for people around me.

If I think, everything is lost.