I am apparently gentle, ...

I am apparently gentle, unstable, and full of pretenses.  I will die a poet killed by the nonpoets, will renounce no dream, resign myself to no ugliness, accept nothing of the world but the one I made myself.  I wrote, lived, loved like Don Quixote, and on the day of my death I will say: ‘Excuse me, it was all a dream,’ and by that time I may have found one who will say: ‘Not at all, it was true, absolutely true.’
I am apparently gentle, unstable, and full of pretenses.  I will die a poet killed by the nonpoets, will renounce no dream, resign myself to no ugliness, accept nothing of the world but the one I made myself.  I wrote, lived, loved like Don Quixote, and on the day of my death I will say: ‘Excuse me, it was all a dream,’ and by that time I may have found one who will say: ‘Not at all, it was true, absolutely true.’

Quotes from the same author

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.
The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.