Fernando Pessoa

“ Shakespeare can no longer teach me to be subtle, nor Milton to be complete. My intellect has attained a pliancy and a reach that enable me to assume any emotion I desire and enter at will into any state of mind. For that which it is ever an effort and an anguish to strive for, completeness, no book at all can be an aid. ”

“ But I have nothing to learn and the pleasure to be drawn from books is of a type that can with profit be substituted by that which the contact with nature and the observation of life can directly give me. ”

“ I have ceased to be interested in merely clever people -- Wells, Chesterton, Shaw. The ideas these people have are such as occur to many non-writers; the construction of their works is wholly a negative quantity. ”