Jose Saramago Quotes

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.

For human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born.

Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard.

The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.

Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.

A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.

The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention.

Writer's make national literature, while translators make universal literature.

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better.

Each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs.

The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words.

A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo.'

The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.

Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived.

...the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.

I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been.

As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping.

Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.

all stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.

In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness.

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.

The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterwards.

Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow.

We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together.

We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.

I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.

I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

There is nothing healthier for a man than to walk on his own two legs.

In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die.

That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.

Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep - Blindness

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.

The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.

Death is the inventor of God.

doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time

I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money?

I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.

As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.

A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.

Globalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can.