Fernando Pessoa Quotes

Every time I wake, I understand how easy it is to be nothing.

I think and that is all that I am.

Self-discovery is above all the realization that we are alone: it is the opening of an impalpable, transparent wall - that of our consciousness - between the world and ourselves.

Yes, once—many, many years ago. I thought I had made a wrong decision. Of course, it turned out that I ha been right all along. But I was wrong to have thought I was wrong.

Basically, when I did 'Infinity' in 1997, I had thoughts in my head that left me with a lot of questions. I've gone to certain personal limits with 'Infinity' that, at the end of it, I think, scared me. And I've made a lot of really kinda bad mistakes as a result of that.

I contemplate the idea that maybe I'm an alcoholic. I get this occassionally, the need to define myself as something-or-the-other, and at various times in my life have wondered if I'm a Goth, a homosexul, a Jew, a Catholic or a manic depressive, whether I am adopted, or have a hole in my heart, or possess the ability to move objects with the power of my mind, and have always, most regretfully, come to the conclusion that I'm none of the above. The fact is I'm actually not ANYTHING.

There’s enough metaphysics in not thinking about anything.

Do you think I know what I'm doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it's writing, or the ball can guess where it's going next.

I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think… and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment - it's frightful - if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire.

In fact, I don't even know myself. That is the big secret of the story. That there is no story.

I look for myself but find no one. I belong to the chrysanthemum hour of bright flowers placed in tall vases. I should make an ornament of my soul.

Your awareness has its source in unity. Instead of seeking outside yourself, go to the source to realize who you are.

And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.

Error ... is less an intellectual problem than an existential one - a crisis not in what we know, but in who we are. We hear something of that identity crisis in the questions we ask ourselves in the aftemath of error: What was I thinking? How could I have done that?

All these years of thinking, ending up like this: In front of all this beauty, understanding nothing.

We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.

There are moments when I cannot bear this unremitting consciousness. It knows only itself. Awake, I am in a continuum with my dreams. I feel my typewriters, my table, my chair to have that assurance of a solid world, where things take up space, where is not the endless emptiness of insubstantial thought that leads to nowhere but itself. My memories pale as I prevail upon them again and again. They become more and more ghostly. I fear nothing so much as losing them altogether and having only my blank endless mind to live in.

Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there's little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?

Everyday I look in the mirror and make sure I don't pinch myself so I don't wake up. I don't take it for granted. All the time I say: 'Why me?'

Error tills its own barren soil and buries itself in the ground, since ground and dust stand for nothingness.

Do you even know who the enemy is?" "I think... it's me".

I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.

I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn't me, and I knew it wasn't, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?