Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate
sensualities. Perhaps because real sensuality doesn't interest me in
the least, not even intellectually or in my dreams, desire in me
metamorphosed into my aptitude for creating verbal rhythms and for
noting them in the speech of others. I tremble when someone speaks
well. Certain pages from Fialho and Chateaubriand make my whole being
tingle in all of its pores, make me rave in a still shiver with
impossible pleasure. Even certain pages of Vieira, in the cold
perfection of their syntactical engineering, make me quiver like a
branch in the wind, with the passive delirium of something shaken.
Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
