Jose Saramago Quotes & Sayings

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets.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. — Jose Saramago

Sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another ... — Jose Saramago

But it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. — Jose Saramago

Perhaps she would finally ask him what the devil the Central Registry was up to going to so much trouble over one person, a woman of no importance, it would be an indecent lie, as well as arrant stupidity, to tell her that we are all equal in the eyes of the Central Registry, just as the sun is there for everyone each time it rises, there are things one should avoid saying to an older person if we don't want them to laugh in our faces. — Jose Saramago

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. — Jose Saramago

There are those who deny me the right to speak of God, because I am not a believer. And I say that I have every right in the world. I want to talk about God because it is a problem that affects all humanity. — Jose Saramago

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

The hidden meaning of life . . . But the hidden meaning of life is that life has no hidden meaning. — Jose Saramago

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

The church I mentioned will be established, but its foundation, in order to be truly solid, will be dug in flesh, its walls made from the cement of renunciation, tears, agony, anguish, every conceivable form of death. — Jose Saramago

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

He did all this with great concentration in order to keep his thoughts at bay, in order to let them in only one at a time, having first asked them what they contained, because you can't be too careful with thoughts, some present themselves to us with a cloying air of false innocence and then, when it's too late, reveal their true wicked selves. — Jose Saramago

God does not forgive the sins He makes us commit. — Jose Saramago

Have you ever wondered if death is the same for all living beings, be they animals, human beings included, or plants, from the grass you walk on to the hundred-meter-tall sequoiadendron giganteum, will the death that kills a man who knows he's going to die be the same as that of a horse who never will. — Jose Saramago

...everything that is not literature is life. — Jose Saramago

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

people's lives could also be told from front to back, one could wait until they ended and then, gradually, follow the stream back to the source, identifying the tributaries on the way and sailing up them too, aware that each one, even the smallest and feeblest, was, in its time and in itself, a major river, and in this slow, deliberate way, alert to every scintillation on the surface of the water, every bubble risen from the bottom, every sudden downward flurry, every stagnant stillness, reach the end of the narrative and place after the first of all moments the final full stop, and to take the same amount of time that the lives thus told had actually lasted. — Jose Saramago

Americans have discovered fear. — Jose Saramago

But appearances, while not always as deceptive as people say. — Jose Saramago

The past is an immense area of stony ground that many people would like to drive across as if it were a motorway, while others move patiently from stone to stone, lifting each one because they need to know what lies beneath. — Jose Saramago

Contrary to what most people think, making a decision is one of the easiest decisions in the world, as is more than proved by the fact that we make decision upon decision throughout the day, there, however, we run straight into the heart of the matter, for these decisions always come to us afterward with their particular little problems, or, to make ourselves quite clear, with their rough edges needing to be smoothed, the first of these problems being our capacity for sticking to a decision and the second our willingness to follow it through. — Jose Saramago

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

If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life. — Jose Saramago

Who is that witch, asked the old man with the black eyepatch, these are things we say when we do not know how to take a good look at ourselves, had he lived as she had lived, we should like to see how long his civilised ways would last. — Jose Saramago

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. — Jose Saramago

A journey never ends. Only the travellers end. — Jose Saramago

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

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

The good and the evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much-talked-of immortality, Possibly, but this man is dead and must be buried. — Jose Saramago

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are. — Jose Saramago

That is what we say when we do not wish to play the weakling, we say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands — Jose Saramago

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. — Jose Saramago

BESIDES THE CONVERSATION of women, it is dreams that keep the world in orbit. But dreams also form a diadem of moons, therefore the sky is that splendour inside a man's head, if his head is not, in fact, his own unique sky. — Jose Saramago

Blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone. — Jose Saramago

Death is the inventor of God. — Jose Saramago

I can explain, There's no need, I've been keeping regular track of your activities, and, besides, your notebook has been a great help to me, may I take the opportunity to congratulate you on the excellent style and the appropriateness of the language, I'll hand in my resignation tomorrow, I won't accept it. — Jose Saramago

To threaten someone with a gun is the same as attacking them, If you had taken his gun, the real war would have started, and in all likelihood we would never have got out of that place alive, — Jose Saramago

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

- You're very poetic.
- No, just sad. — Jose Saramago

It's all words and only words, and beyond the words there's nothing ... a word, which, like all the others, can only be explained by more words, but since the words we use to explain things, successfully or not, will, in turn, have to be explained, our conversation will lead nowhere, the mistaken and the true will alternate, like some kind of curse, and we'll never know what's right and what's wrong. - subhro, the mahout, Pg. 49 — Jose Saramago

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. — Jose Saramago

Virtue, should there be anyone who still ignores the fact, always finds pitfalls on the extremely difficult path of perfection, but sin and vice are so favoured by fortune ... — Jose Saramago

Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it. — Jose Saramago

[ ... ] with the protecting sky in all its splendour and the golden sun blazing forth against a backdrop of crystalline blue, to use the inspired words of a television reporter[ ... ]. — Jose Saramago

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth. — Jose Saramago

The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture. — Jose Saramago

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

The will of God, the creator and ruler of the universe, embraces all possible wills, His own as well as that of every man born into this world. If this is so, intervened Jesus with sudden insight, then each man is a part of God. — Jose Saramago

The human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily. — Jose Saramago

People might ask me, What do you propose instead? I propose nothing. I am a mere novelist, I just write about the world as I see it. It is not my job to transform it. I cannot transform it all by myself, and I wouldn't even know how to. I limit myself to saying what I believe the world to be. — Jose Saramago

We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there's a will, there's a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life. — Jose Saramago

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

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. — Jose Saramago

[ ... ] 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. — Jose Saramago

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. — Jose Saramago

The pigs, either because of the shock of it or because they hated being possessed by demons, went wild and threw themselves over the cliff, all two thousand of them, and into the lake, where they drowned. — Jose Saramago

Don't let the devil hear you, minister, The devil has such good hearing he doesn't need things to be spoken out loud, Well, god help us then, There's no point asking him for help either, he was born stone-deaf. — Jose Saramago

We are, more and more, our own defects and not our qualties.
The Elephant's Journey — Jose Saramago

Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974. — Jose Saramago

The map they are using does not indicate the village of Orce, how very inconsiderate on the part of the cartographers, I'll bet they didn't forget to indicate their own hometowns, in future they should remember how vexing it is for someone to check out his birthplace on a map only to find a blank space, this has given rise to the gravest of problems for those trying to establish personal and national identities. — Jose Saramago

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

We can escape from everything, but not from ourselves. — Jose Saramago

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

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

Buying that mask of Beethoven was an impossible dream. — Jose Saramago

Confidential matters are not dealt with over the telephone, you'd better come here in person. I cannot leave the house, Do you mean you're ill, Yes, I'm ill, the blind man said after a pause. In that case you ought to call a doctor, a real doctor, quipped the functionary, and, delighted with his own wit, he rang off.
The man's insolence was like a slap in the face. Only after some minutes had passed, had he regained enough composure to tell his wife how rudely he had been treated. Then, as if he had discovered something that he should have known a long time ago, he murmured sadly, This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice. — Jose Saramago

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

Unless Caesar Augustus is unwittingly complying with the will of God, if it is true that in His divine wisdom He has ordained that Joseph and Mary should go to Bethlehem at this time. — Jose Saramago

I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all. — Jose Saramago

Prudence tried to hold him back, grip him by the sleeve, but, as everyone knows, or should know, prudence is only of any use when it is trying to conserve something in which we are no longer interested. — Jose Saramago

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

Why they were loaded with bags of beans and peas and anything else they happened to pick up when they were still some distance away from the street where the first blind man and his wife lived, for that is where they are going, is a question that could only occur to someone who has never in his life suffered shortages. — Jose Saramago

We have deemed all these words necessary in order to explain that we have been traveling more slowly than was predicted, concision is not a definitive virtue, on occasion one loses out by talking too much, it is true, but how much has also been gained by saying more than was strictly necessary. — Jose Saramago

We no longer live in that fabulous age when the sun, to whom we owe so much, was so generous that it halted its journey over Gibeon in order to give Joshua ample time to overcome the five kings besieging the city. — Jose Saramago

The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day. — Jose Saramago

God will save you.
Surely you're forgetting that God saves souls rather than bodies. — Jose Saramago

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

If shame still has any meaning in this hell we're expected to live ... it is thanks to that person who had the courage to go and kill, ... Agreed, but shame won't fill our plates, ... You're right in what you say, there have always been those who have filled their bellies because they had no sense of shame. — Jose Saramago

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

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

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

The chronicler would abandon any idea of making a detailed report of all the other ills that are afflicting most of the nearly three hundred inmates being kept in this inhumane quarantine, but he could not fail to mention at least two cases of fairly advanced cancer, for the authorities had no humanitarian scruples when rounded up the blind and confining them here, they even stated that the laws once made is the same for everyone and that democracy is incompatible with preferential treatment. As cruel fate would have it, amongst all these inmates there is only one doctor, and an ophthalmologist at that, the last thing we need. — Jose Saramago

Casting a ballot is your irrevocable right, and no one will ever deny you that right, but just as you tell children not to play with matches, so we warn whole peoples of the dangers of playing with dynamite. — Jose Saramago

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich. — Jose Saramago

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

Just two tears. That's all life is worth. — Jose Saramago

The doves, as we know, must be killed according to the law before Mary's purification can be acknowledged and ratified. Any ironic or irreverent disciple of Voltaire will find it difficult to resist making the obvious remark that, things being what they are, purity can be maintained only so long as there are innocent creatures to sacrifice in this world, whether turtledoves, lambs, or others. — Jose Saramago

you know what they say, don't wash your basket out, until the last grape's in — Jose Saramago

No one has an obligation to love anyone else, but we are all under an obligation to respect each other. According to this logic, Saramago considered — Jose Saramago

With the passage of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of our blood and the salt of our tears. — Jose Saramago

What do you think you'll do, Abel?" Abel walked slowly over to Silvestre and said: "Something very simple: I'm going to live. I will leave your home feeling much more confident than when I entered it. Not because the path you showed me was the right one for me, but because you made me realize that I need to find my own path. It will take time, though ... " "Yours will always be the path of pessimism." "Probably, but I want my pessimism to keep me safe from facile, comforting illusions
like love." Silvestre gripped him by the shoulders and shook him: "But Abel, anything that isn't built on love will only generate hate!" "You're right, my friend, but perhaps that's how it will have to be for a long time yet. The day when we can build on love has still now arrived. — Jose Saramago

Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking. — Jose Saramago

The first blind man had begun by declaring that his wife would not be subjected to the shame of giving her body to strangers in exchange for whatever, she had no desire to do so nor would he permit it, for dignity has no price, that when someone starts making small concessions, in the end live loses all meaning. The doctor then asked him what meaning he saw in the situation in which all of them there found themselves, starving, covered in filth up to their ears, ridden with lice, eaten by bedbugs, bitten by fleas, I, too, would prefer my wife not to go, but what I want serves no purpose, ... I know that my manly pride, this thing we call male pride, if after so many humiliations, we still preserve something worthy of that name, I know that it will suffer, it already is, I cannot avoid it, but it is probably the only solution, if we want to live. — Jose Saramago

A man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force. — Jose Saramago

Jesus wiped his tears on the back of his hand, blew his nose, who knows where, and yes, there is no point spending the whole day here, the desert is what it is, it surrounds us, in some ways protects us, but when it comes to giving, it gives us nothing, it simply looks on, and when the sun suddenly clouds over, so that we find ourselves thinking, The sky mirrors our sorrow, we are being foolish, because the sky is quite impartial and neither rejoices in our happiness nor is cast down by our grief. — Jose Saramago

They always left the thermos full, ready for their return home. The five minutes devoted to that small late-night feast made them feel rather special, as if they had suddenly left the mediocrity of their lives behind them and risen a few rungs on the economic ladder. The kitchen disappeared and gave way to an intimate little drawing room with expensive furniture and paintings on the wall and a piano in one corner. — Jose Saramago

Of course it does. I can't make judgments using other people's ideas!" "There's the sticking point! You're forgetting that other people have their own ideas about good and evil, ideas that might be better than yours . . ." "If everyone thought like you, we would never get anywhere. We need rules, we need laws! — Jose Saramago

Whether in peace or in war, man generally speaking is the best thing that ever happened to the gods. — Jose Saramago

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

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. — Jose Saramago