“You have to be humble enough to accept that you’re secondary to the author, and yet have enough chutzpah to take that other language and transform it.”

Neither of them knew what “carte blanche” meant, but if, during the Spanish Civil War, someone had bothered to explain it to them, they would both have replied in unison: “That’s us! That’s 

The man driving the truck is called Cipriano Algor, he is a potter by profession and is sixty-four years old, although he certainly does not look his age. The man sitting beside him is his son-in-law, Marçal Gacho, and he is not yet thirty. Nevertheless, from his face too, you would think him much younger

A man went to knock at the king’s door and said, Give me a boat. The king’s house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand)

I feel so very grand
at this solemn
              and futile hour

So obsessed am I with feeling
That I sometimes lose my way when I step free
From all the sensations I receive.

I never kept sheep,
But it’s as if I had.
My soul is like a shepherd,
It knows the wind and the sun
And walks hand in hand with the Seasons,
Following and looking.
All the peace of peopleless Nature
Comes to sit by my side.
But I feel as sad as a sunset is
To our imagination,
When we see it fading in the distance
And feel the night enter
Like a butterfly through the open window.

It’s night. The night is very dark. In a house a long way off
Shines the light from a window.
I see it, and I feel human from head to toe.
It’s odd that the whole life of the person who lives there, and who I don’t know,
Draws me in simply because of that distant light.
His life is doubtless real, and he has a face, gestures, family, and profession.
Now, though, all that matters to me is the light in his window.

Grubby, unknown child playing at my door,
I don’t ask if you bring me a message full of symbols.
I’m drawn to you because I’ve never seen you before,
And, of course, if you were clean, you’d be a different child,
You wouldn’t even come here.
Play in the dust, go on, play!

Fernando Pessoa created more than a hundred alter egos, all of whom he gave complex biographies and distinctive styles of their own.