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

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

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets.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

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.

That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.

A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo.'

When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time.