another pessoa

"like all men endowed with great mental mobility, i have an irrevocable, organic love of settledness. i abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places."
- 121, fp.

aesthetics of artificiality

"i live aesthetically as someone else. i've sculpted my life like a statue made of matter that's foreign to my being. having employed myself-awareness in such a purely artistic way, and having become so completely external to myself, i sometimes no longer recognize myself. who am i behind this unreality? i don't know. i must be someone. and if i avoid living, acting and feeling, then believe me, it's so as not to tamper with the contours of my invented personality. i want to be exactly like what i wanted to be and am not. if i were to give in to life, i'd be destroyed. i want to be a work of art, at least in my soul, since i can't be one in my body. that's why i've sculpted myself in quiet isolation and have placed myself in a hothouse, cut off from fresh air and direct light - where the absurd flower of my artificiality can blossom in secluded beauty."
- 114, fp.