It is strange how the elderly fall silent when they ought to go on speaking, obliging the young to learn everything from scratch.

No human being can achieve all he or she desires in this life except in dreams, so good night all.

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind of message, I suppose that's it.

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.

Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two days later, on the 18th. It was thanks to this petty fraud that my family escaped from paying the fine for not having registered my birth at the proper legal time.

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

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered