Jose Saramago Quotes

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

Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.

Men are angels born without wings, nothing could be nicer than to be born without wings and to make them grow.

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

We know that it is the search that gives meaning to any find and that one often has to travel a long way in order to arrive at what is near.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

Fear can cause blindness, said the girl with dark glasses, Never a truer word, that could not be truer,

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.

I am not a prophet.

[ ... ] death never replies, not because she doesn't want to, but because she doesn't know what to say in the face of the greatest of human sorrows.

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

I have yet to hear a single idea that was worth considering for longer than it took us to listen to it.

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

God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit.

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

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

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

The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see.

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

Human nature is, by definition, a talkative one, imprudent, indiscreet, gossipy, incapable of closing its mouth and keeping it closed.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.

There is nothing as sad, nothing as unutterably sad, as an old man crying.

his career had just taken a great leap forward, he was going to pee in his chief's toilet.

The order that wants the dead where they should be among the dead, and the living among the living

That we're going to die is something we know from the moment we are born, That's why, in some ways, it's as if we were born dead.

I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me.

News is nothing but words, and you can never really tell if words are news.

Everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos. Now,

Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.

The objectivity of the narrator is a modern invention, we need only reflect that our Lord God didn't want it in his book.

Fear can cause blindness ... we were already blind the moment we turned blind, fear struck us blind, fear will keep us blind

your God is the only warden of a prison where the only prisoner is your God.

There is nothing in this world that belongs to us in an absolute sense,

No, I've never been to Galicia, Galicia is the land of others

The republic was no longer a novelty, and here people only appreciate novelties.

None of them has a capital P branded on his forehead,

From Spain expect only cold winds and cold wives.'" "Ah, so you don't think they get on, then?

Images don't see, You're wrong, images see with the eyes of those who see them,

Our god, the creator of heaven and earth, is completely mad

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

That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind.

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

Everyone wants to save Man, but no one wants to know about men.

I know nothing about God, except that His pleasure is as terrifying as His displeasure.

The fairest and most radically human, coming here to declare that, ultimately, God does not deserve to see.

A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little.

We all know that each day that dawns is the first for some and will be the last for others, and that for most people it will be just another day.

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.

Buying that mask of Beethoven was an impossible dream.

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest.

Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.

Switch on the light, she said, I want to know if this is real.

I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends.

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.

Are dreams perhaps the soul's memories of the body,

That's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.

We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose on the world ...

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

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

The amber light came on.

Chaos is order yet undeciphered.

Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.

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

Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan.

the only thing that lasts a whole lifetime is life itself, everything else is inevitably precarious, unstable, transient

We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.

how often fears come to sour our life and prove, in the end, to have no foundation, no reason to exist

Everyone has to speak of what they know, and what they do not know they should ask,

Everything that will happen will happen ... and if you don't get to see it.. It will be because we didn't live long enough

There are such moments in life, when, in order for heaven to open, it is necessary for a door to close.

In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.

They had their past to remember, the present to live in and the future to fear.

The instant is gone, time has carried us into the realm of memory, it was like this, no, it was not, and everything becomes what we choose to invent.

I don't quite grasp your meaning.
Just as I don't quite understand what I am saying. But back to the point ... .

Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.

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

You have no idea what it is like to watch two blind people fighting. Fighting has always been, more or less, a form of blindness.

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

Keep what is of no use at the moment, and later you will find what you need.

Hard experience of life has shown us that, generally speaking, it is inadvisable to trust too much in human nature.

Americans have discovered fear.

What the day brings is one thing, what we ourselves contribute to the day is quite another

We can escape from everything, but not from ourselves.

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

...everything that is not literature is life.

It is not only the voice of blood that needs no eyes, love, which people say is blind, also has a voice of its own.

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

Just like everything else in life, let time take its course and it will find a solution.

A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.

Pommel of his saddle and his helmet with a nose-piece, arms which might well prevent him from reaching any conclusions based on humanitarian logic,

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is.

I still have the strength to carry the bread I eat, What always weighs more is the bread of the others,

Few things in life hurt as much as the awareness that one has betrayed the ideas of one's youth.