Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.
Interpretation
Literature provides a pleasurable escape from the realities of life.
In this quote, Fernando Pessoa suggests that literature offers a delightful and enjoyable means of retreating from the challenges and harshness of real life. It implies that through reading or writing, individuals can engage in a different reality that serves as a refuge from their daily struggles, allowing them to momentarily ignore life's demands and complexities.
In practice
During a book club meeting, when discussing the impact of literature on our lives.
I have at this moment so many fundamental thoughts, so many truly metaphysical things to say, that I suddenly get tired and decide not to write any more, not to think any more, but to allow the fever of speaking to make me sleepy, and with my eyes closed, like a cat, I play with everything I could have said.
It's been months since I last wrote. I've lived in a state of mental slumber, leading the life of someone else. I've felt, very often, a vicarious happiness. I haven't existed. I've been someone else. I've lived without thinking.
We all have two lives: The true, the one we dreamed of in childhood And go on dreaming of as adults in a substratum of mist; the false, the one we love when we live with others, the practical, the useful, the one we end up by being put in a coffin.
I'm a man for whom the outside world is an inner Reality.
My dreams are a stupid refuge, like an umbrella against a thunderbolt.
The chill of what I won't feel gnaws at my present heart.
If a writer knows what he or she is doing, I'll go along for the ride. If he or she doesn't... well, I'm in my fifties now, and there are a lot of books out there. I don't have time to waste with the poorly written ones.
There is no future for e-books, because they are not books. E-books smell like burned fuel.
the association of children and fairy-stories is an accident of our domestic history. Fairy-stories have in the modern lettered world been relegated to the βnursery,β as shabby or old-fashioned furniture is relegated to the play-room, primarily because the adults do not want it, and do not mind if it is misused.
If we can't stamp out literature in the country, we can at least stop its being brought in from outside.
It is very difficult for a writer of my generation, if he is honest, to pretend indifference to the work of Somerset Maugham. He was always so entirely there.
As I look back, I feel a touch of pride at my younger self's dedication to literature, which gave him the strength of mind to resist the blandishments of the enemies of promise. The sirens of ad-land sang sweetly and seductively, but I thought of Odysseus lashing himself to the mast of his ship, and somehow stayed on course.
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