Jose Saramago Quotes

...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.

We can escape from everything, but not from ourselves.

In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die.

I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.

There are such moments in life, when, in order for heaven to open, it is necessary for a door to close.

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.

Every thing in life is a uniform; the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we're naked.

A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.

Men are angels born without wings, nothing could be nicer than to be born without wings and to make them grow.

We are finally living in Plato's cave, if we consider how those who were imprisoned within the cave - who could do nothing but watch those shadows passing on the back wall - were convinced that those shadows were their one and only reality. I see a profound similarity to all this in the epoch we're now living in. We no longer live simply through images: we live through images that don't even exist, which are the result not of physical projection but of pure virtuality.

Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face up to what is there before us.

...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.

Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.

Each day is a little bit of history

I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money?

We are marching against the law of the jungle that the United States and its acolytes old and new want to impose on the world.

Jeronimo, my grandfather, swine-herder and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again. To truly appreciate life we must remember that nothing lasts for ever and take nothing we enjoy for granted. In so doing we stay grateful and happy for all our good fortune.

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.

Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?

Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered

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

With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

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.

Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.

I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

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

The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.

Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.

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

we would understand much more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to an assiduous study of its contradictions, instead of wasting time on identities and coherences, seeing as these have a duty to provide their own explanations.

Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.

Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves.

Creating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.

Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.

A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

In general, fakirs, like scribes and potters, are sitting down, when he's standing up, a fakir is just like an other man, and sitting down, he'll be smaller than the others.

Death is the inventor of God.

When we are born, when we enter this world, it is as if we signed a pact for the rest of our life, but a day may come when we will ask ourselves Who signed this on my behalf?

Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

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.

The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better.