Jorge Amado Quotes & Sayings

There are certain kinds of flowers-have you ever noticed?-that are beautiful and fragrant as long as they grow in the garden. But if you put them in vases, even silver vases, they wilt and die (272) — Jorge Amado

The whole street took part in the serenade to Flor, Flor leaning against her high window, all ruffles and lace, drenched in moonlight. Down below Vadinho, her gallant knight, with the red rose in his hand, so red it was almost black, the rose of her love. — Jorge Amado

But the streets still revealed, along with the progress and future greatness, some remnants of the recent past, of the time of bandits and bloodshed. — Jorge Amado

Not even God who made us all can kill everybody at once. He kills people one by one, and the more he kills the more people are gonna be born and grow up and go on being born and growing up and mixing, and no son-of-a-bitch is gonna stop 'em! — Jorge Amado

It is a very risky thing for anyone to go about proclaiming the truth simply because he finds himself in possession of concrete documentary proofs or on the evidence of his own eyes, which is always overestimated. — Jorge Amado

Life was good, one had only to live it. — Jorge Amado

Love
the most wonderful and most terrible thing in the world. — Jorge Amado

Love is not to be proven or measured,' said Joao Fulgencio. 'It's like Gabriela. It exists, and that is enough. The fact that you can't understand or explain something doesn't do away with it. I know nothing about the stars, but I see them in the heavens; and my ignorance in no way affects either their existence or their beauty' (376). — Jorge Amado

I said there are certain flowers that wilt if you put them in a vase' (368). — Jorge Amado

The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read. — Jorge Amado

Many things I might not write today because I no longer believe them, but I wouldn't change them, since I believed them at the time. — Jorge Amado

Night was running ahead of itself. — Jorge Amado

Friends, we have a hero living among us. — Jorge Amado

Does truth lie in the everyday events, the daily incidents, in the pettiness and vulgarity most people's lives are compounded of, or does the truth have its abode in the dream it is given us to dream to flee our sad human condition? — Jorge Amado

Exu eats anything in the way of food, but he drinks only one thing: straight rum. At the crossroads Exu waits sitting upon the night to take the most difficult road, the narrowest, the most winding, the bad road, it is generally held, for all Exu wants is to frolic, to make mischief.
Exu, the great mischief-maker, Vadinho's patron deity. — Jorge Amado

I believe that she has the kind of magic that causes revolutions and promotes great discoveries. There's nothing I enjoy more than to observe Gabriela in the midst of a group of people. Do you know what she reminds me of? A fragrant rose in a bouquet of artificial flowers. — Jorge Amado

The world is like that
incomprehensible and full of surprises . — Jorge Amado

He owned a whole world full of memories, of lovely moments relived and happy recollections. I'm not saying he was happy or that he didn't suffer. He suffered very much, but he did not despair; he still drew nourishment from what he had been given. But the sadness never left him. Happiness needs more than memories of the past to feed on; it also needs dreams of the future. — Jorge Amado

I am a writer who has written about the life of my people, the character of my people. What I can say is that the greatest hero of the Brazilian novel is the Brazilian people. — Jorge Amado

I am like my characters - sometimes even the female ones. — Jorge Amado

I'm under no illusions about the importance of my work. But if it has any worth, it is that it truly reflects the Brazilian people. — Jorge Amado

He took her as though she were a toy, a toy or a closed rosebud which he brought into bloom each night of pleasure. [She] began to lose her timidity, giving herself over to that lascivious union, growing in response, turning into a heartsome, spirited lover. — Jorge Amado

They were mistaken if they thought he did not kill her because he loved her too much. At that moment Nacib did not love her. He did not hate her either. He beat her mechanically, as if to relax his nerves from the tension of suffering. He was empty like a vase without a flower. He felt a pain in his heart as if someone were slowly pushing a dagger into it. He felt neither hate nor love. Just pain (366). — Jorge Amado

Love is not to be proven or measured ... It exists, and that is enough. — Jorge Amado

She was a glass snake. She wasn't poisonous but she sowed affliction just by going among men-mysteriously, like a miracle" (385) — Jorge Amado