لدي كتاب صغير أكتب فيه حين أنساك كتابٌ ذو غلافٍ أسود لَم أخُطّ فيه كلمةً بعد - Fernando Pessoa

Civilisation consists in giving something a name that doesn't belong to it and then dreaming over the result. And the false name joined to the true dream does create a new reality. The object does change into something else, because we make it change. We manufacture realities.

I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I've seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people, with that metaphysical absurdity known as "flesh and blood." In fact "flesh and blood" describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher's marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive, the sirloin steaks and cutlets of Fate.

The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.