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.

There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.

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

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.

Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.

It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.

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.