Only poets and philosophers see the world as it really is, for only to them is it given to live without illusions. To see clearly is to not act. - Fernando Pessoa

I abhor running real risks, but it's not because I'm afraid of feeling too intensely. It's because they break my perfect focus on my sensations, and this disturbs and depersonalizes me.

I never go where there's risk. I fear the tedium of dangers.

The slope takes you to the windmill, but effort takes you nowhere.

O night in which the stars feign light, O night that alone is the size of the Universe, make me, body and soul, part of your body, so that — being mere darkness — I'll lose myself and become night as well, without any dreams as stars within me, nor a hoped-for sun shining with the future.