Botto was described as a slender, medium-height dandy, fastidiously dressed, oval-faced, a tiny mouth with thin pursed lips, strange, scrutinizing, ironic eyes (sometimes clouded by a disturbing malicious expression) hidden by an everpresent fedora.
He had a sardonic sense of humour, a sharp, perverse and irreverent mind and tongue, and he was a brilliant and witty conversationalist.
He also reveled in indiscreet gossiping.
Some of his contemporaries said he was frivolous, mercurial, mundane, uneducated, vindictive, a mythomaniac and, above all, vain and narcissistic to the point of megalomania.

Botto's mythomania seems to have been a lifelong trait of his.
He talked about unlikely friendships with people like Vaslav Nijinsky, Federico García Lorca or André Gide.
On the other hand, he never alluded to his modest background or ever talked about his parents or brothers.

He was a regular visitor of Lisbon's popular bohemian quarters and the docks, enjoying the company of sailors, a frequent image in his poems.
In spite of a homosexual fame, he had a lifelong and fully devoted common-law wife, Carminda da Conceição Silva Rodrigues, a widow, nine years his elder. "
Marriage suits every handsome and decadent man", he once wrote.
Botto was described as a slender, medium-height dandy, fastidiously dressed, oval-faced, a tiny mouth with thin pursed lips, strange, scrutinizing, ironic eyes (sometimes clouded by a disturbing malicious expression) hidden by an everpresent fedora. He had a sardonic sense of humour, a sharp, perverse and irreverent mind and tongue, and he was a brilliant and witty conversationalist. He also reveled in indiscreet gossiping. Some of his contemporaries said he was frivolous, mercurial, mundane, uneducated, vindictive, a mythomaniac and, above all, vain and narcissistic to the point of megalomania.
Botto's mythomania seems to have been a lifelong trait of his. He talked about unlikely friendships with people like Vaslav Nijinsky, Federico García Lorca or André Gide. On the other hand, he never alluded to his modest background or ever talked about his parents or brothers.
He was a regular visitor of Lisbon's popular bohemian quarters and the docks, enjoying the company of sailors, a frequent image in his poems. In spite of a homosexual fame, he had a lifelong and fully devoted common-law wife, Carminda da Conceição Silva Rodrigues, a widow, nine years his elder. "Marriage suits every handsome and decadent man", he once wrote.
António Botto