I feel closer ties and more intimate bonds with certain characters in books, with certain images I’ve seen in engravings, than with many supposedly real people with the metaphysical absurdity known as ‘flesh and blood’. In fact, ‘flesh and blood’ describes them very well: they resemble cuts of meat laid out on the butcher’s marble slab, dead creatures bleeding as though still alive. Fernando Pessoa
About This Quote

The best way to describe this quote is that it is reminding us that our flesh and blood are not the only thing that matters. If you were to be trapped in a death match with another person, you would do anything to get out alive. You would even sacrifice your flesh and blood for the chance to live. If the main character of a story was about to die in battle, you would care more about their survival than yours.

The reason for this is because you feel close ties and intimate bonds with that character. They are the only other person in this world that you can relate to or know well, even if they are fictional. This quote reminds us that no matter how much we care about other people, our flesh and blood will always matter above everything else.

Source: The Book Of Disquiet

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  1. There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
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  3. If after I die, people want to write my biography, there is nothing simpler. They only need two dates: the date of my birth and the date of my death. Between one and another, every day is mine.
  4. Life is an experimental journey undertaken involuntarily. It is a journey of the spirit through the material world and, since it is the spirit that travels, it is the spirit that is experienced. That is why there exist contemplative souls who have lived more intensely,...
  5. Sit still with me in the shade of these green trees, which have no weightier thought than the withering of their leaves when autumn arrives, or the stretching of their many stiff fingers into the cold sky of the passing winter. Sit still with me...
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