​‘All my life I have loved travelling at night, with a companion, each of us discussing and sharing the known and familiar behaviour of the other. It’s like a villanelle, this inclination of going back to events in our past, the way the villanelle’s form refuses to move forward in linear development, circling instead at those familiar moments of emotion. Only the rereading counts, Nabokov said. So the strange form of that belfry, turning onto itself again and again, felt familiar to me. For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are sing like in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.’

in Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje

​Erguei o nosso ser à transparência

Para podermos ler melhor a vida

in A Paz sem Vencedores e sem Vencidos

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andersen

‘Wherever I was I did this, since Miss Lasqueti had said, ‘You must keep your ears and eyes open. It’s an education out there.’ And I continued filling my old St Thomas’ College examination booklet with the things I heard.’

in The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje

Mergulho nos meus livros e mergulho nos livros que me rodeiam, fragmentos de vida que vou presenciando enquanto percorro as ruas de Lisboa, enquanto atravesso o rio.

Es muss sein: escrever

… ​em centenas de pequenas notas, vou assim, vivendo intermitentemente.

Acho estranho ter uma imagem. Sinto-me só interior.

Es muss sein: escrever

​Existo, verdadeiramente, quando escrevo. Mas vou adiando a minha escrita para viver o dia-a-dia que se impõe, tão prático e necessário e útil. A minha escrita, inútil, sonhadora, um plano diferente de existência, não me abandona, fica à minha espera.