I'm astounded whenever I finish something. Astounded and distressed. My perfectionist instinct should inhibit me from finishing: it should inhibit me from even beginning. But I get distracted and start doing something. What I achieve is not the product of an act of my will but of my will's surrender. I begin because I don't have the strength to think; I finish because I don't have the courage to quit. This book is my cowardice.
Tags: writing, cowardice

Other Quotes by "Fernando Pessoa"

If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
Tags: privacy, poetry, life, intimacy, death, birth
Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates.
Tags: like, earth, look, valentine-s-day
I know of no pleasure like that of books, yet I read very little. Books are the entryway to dreams, but people at ease in life don’t need such introductions to enter into conversation with dreams. I could never read a book and give myself over to it; always, with each step, the commentary of my intellect or my imagination interrupts the narrative sequence. After some minutes I am the one who writes and the writing is nowhere to be seen.
Tags: books
Everything stated or expressed by man is a note in the margin of a completely erased text. From what's in the note we can extract the gist of what must have been in the text, but there's always a doubt, and the possible meanings are many.
Tags: language, knowledge
Night will fall on us all and the coach will pull up.
Tags: time, life-and-living
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