marginalia

Jan 9

A novel is a story of what never was, and a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings in a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.

—Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet; picture from Breathless

Nov 30

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Photograph by Andre Kertesz

Nov 28

“To say! To know how to say! To know how to exist via the written voice and the intellectual image! This is all that matters in life; the rest is men and women, imagined loves and factitious vanities, the wiles of our digestion and forgetfulness, people squirming— like worms when a rock is lifted— under the huge abstract boulder of the meaningless blue sky.” Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

Nov 27

I unroll myself in sentences and paragraphs, I punctuate myself. In my arranging and rearranging of images I’m like a child using newspaper to dress up as a king, and in the way I create rhythm with a series of words I’m like a lunatic adorning my hair with dried flowers that are still alive in my dreams.

—Fernando Pessoa, from The Book of Disquiet

May 23

“As my feet wander I inwardly skim, without reading, a book of text interspersed with swift images, from which I leisurely form an idea that’s never completed.”

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Homing Ship by Andre Kertesz

Mar 31

“I enjoy speaking. Or rather, I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.”

—Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

marginalia

cold green tea press / notebook / flickr