Jose Saramago Quotes

Not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding. ~ Jose Saramago

There are such moments in life: one unexpectedly discovers that perfection exists, that it, too, is a tiny sphere traveling in time, empty, transparent, luminous, and which sometimes (rarely) comes in our direction and encircles us for a few brief moments before traveling on to other parts and other people. ~ Jose Saramago

For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me. ~ Jose Saramago

Having fun is a remedy only for those who don't need one, ~ Jose Saramago

We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other. ~ Jose Saramago

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. ~ Jose Saramago

Given the behaviour of human beings throughout the ages, they do not deserve life, with its many dark sides, in all its beauty, grandeur and magnificence ... ~ 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

It was said that one of them, either the actor or the history teacher, was superfluous in this world, but you weren't, you weren't superfluous, there is no duplicate of you to come and replace you at your mother's side, you were unique, just as every ordinary person is unique, truly unique. ~ Jose Saramago

It is not only the voice of blood that needs no eyes, love, which people say is blind, also has a voice of its own. ~ 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

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

Having is not the same as owning. You can have even those things you don't want. Owning means having and enjoying the things you have. He had a home, a wife and a son, but none of them was truly his. He only had himself, but even then not entirely. ~ Jose Saramago

In the girl's room on the chest of drawers stood the glass vase with the withered flowers, the water had evaporated, it was there that her blind hands directed themselves, her fingers brushed against the dead petals, how fragile life is when it is abandoned. ~ Jose Saramago

And now we shall also die of blindness, I mean, we shall die of blindness and cancer, of blindness and tuberculosis, of blindness and AIDS, of blindness and heart attacks, illnesses may differ from one person to another but what is really killing us now is blindness ~ Jose Saramago

You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives. ~ Jose Saramago

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet. ~ 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

I was employed as a salesman, selling a marvelous tea that could cure all ills. Funny, don't you think? I have never lied so much in my life, I traveled all over the country, selling my miraculous tea to whoever would believe me. I never felt guilty about it. The tea didn't do any harm, I can assure you, and my words gave such hope to those who bought it that I reckon they might still owe me money, because hope is beyond price. ~ 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

The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless. ~ 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

Let's hope it isn't fever, she thought. It couldn't be, more likely some infinite weariness, a longing to curl up inside herself, her eyes, especially her eyes, turned inwards, more, more, more, until they could reach and observe inside her own brain, there where the difference between seeing and not seeing is invisible to the naked eye. ~ Jose Saramago

I think that after all it might be better to leave things as they are ~ Jose Saramago

Fortunately, as human history has shown, it is not unusual for good to come of evil, less is said about the evil that can come out of good ~ Jose Saramago

but the effort of setting the table, heating up the food and then washing the dishes seemed to him tonight a superhuman one. ~ 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

If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that. ~ Jose Saramago

I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me. ~ Jose Saramago

Not that this was our intention, but you know how it is with writing, one word often brings along another in its train simply because they sound good together, even if this means sacrificing respect for levity and ethics for aesthetics, if such solemn concepts are not out of place in a discourse such as this, and often to no one's advantage either. It is in this and other ways, almost without our realizing it, that we make so many enemies in life. ~ Jose Saramago

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

Not everything is as it seems, and not everything that seems is. Between being and seeming there is always a point of agreement, as if being and seeming were two inclined planes that converge and become one. There is a slope and the possibility of sliding down that slope, and when that happens, one reaches a point at which being and seeming meet. ~ 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

The final notes of the funeral march dropped like violets onto the tomb of the hero ~ Jose Saramago

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

The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice. ~ Jose Saramago

The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein. ~ Jose Saramago

A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little. ~ Jose Saramago

Pommel of his saddle and his helmet with a nose-piece, arms which might well prevent him from reaching any conclusions based on humanitarian logic, ~ Jose Saramago

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. ~ Jose Saramago

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

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. ~ Jose Saramago

That's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both. ~ Jose Saramago

Oh, I doubt that, we gods are like bottomless wells, if you lean over us, you won't even see your image reflected back ~ Jose Saramago

That night there was no conversation, no prayers or stories around the fire, as if the proximity of Jerusalem demanded respectful silence, each man searching his heart and asking, Who is this person who resembles me yet whom I fail to recognize. This is not what they actually said, for people do not start talking to themselves like that, nor was this even in their conscious thoughts, but there can be no doubt that as we sit staring into the flames of a camp fire, our silence can be expressed only with words like these, which say everything. ~ Jose Saramago

Contrary to popular belief, the helpful words that open the way to great, dramatic dialogues are, in general, modest, ordinary, banal, no one would think that Would you like a cup of coffee could serve as an introduction to a bitter debate about feelings that have died or to the sweetness of a reconciliation that neither person knows how to bring about. ~ Jose Saramago

Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated. ~ Jose Saramago

There is relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it. ~ Jose Saramago

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger. ~ Jose Saramago

Three can eat as cheaply as two, the well-known arithmetic of resignation in any family where a child is expected, now one can say with even greater authority, Ten million can eat as cheaply as five, and with a quiet smile, A nation is nothing but a great big family. ~ Jose Saramago

Put less respectfully, these men and women, standing before the mirror of their life, spit every day in the face of what they were with the sputum of what they are. ~ Jose Saramago

God should be as clear and transparent as a pane of glass and not go wasting his energies on creating an atmosphere of constant terror and fear. ~ 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

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. ~ Jose Saramago

The trouble with this dog is that it has grown too close to human beings, it will suffer as they do. ~ Jose Saramago

The prime minister's final flourish, Honour your country, for the eyes of the country are upon you, complete with drumrolls and bungle blasts, unearthed from the attics of the mustiest of nationalistic rhetoric, was ruined by a Good night that rang entirely false, but then that is the great thing about ordinary words, they are incapable of deceit. ~ Jose Saramago

The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see. ~ Jose Saramago

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

The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975. ~ Jose Saramago

...A great night, yes sir, exclaimed one of them licking his chops and another confirmed, Those seven were worth fourteen, it's true that one of them was no great shakes, but in the middle of all that uproar who noticed, their men are lucky sods, if they're man enough for them. It would be better if they weren't, then they'd be more eager. From the far end of the ward, the doctor's wife said, There are no longer seven of us, Has one of you vamoosed, someone in the group asked, laughing, She didn't vamoose, she died, Oh, hell, then you lot will have to work all the harder next time, It wasn't much of a loss, she was no great shakes, said the doctor's wife. Disconcerted, the messengers did not know how to respond, what they had just heard struck them as indecent, some of them even came round to thinking that when all is said and done all women are bitches, such a lack of respect, to refer to a woman like that, just because her tits weren't in the right place and she had no arse to speak of. ~ Jose Saramago

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. ~ Jose Saramago

I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments. ~ Jose Saramago

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

Switch on the light, she said, I want to know if this is real. ~ Jose Saramago

You and me, your common sense and you, we hardly ever meet to talk, only very occasionally, and, to be perfectly honest, it's hardly ever been worthwhile, That's my fault I suppose, No, it's my fault too, we are obliged by our nature and our condition to follow parallel roads, but the distance that separates or divides us is so great that mostly we don't hear each other ~ Jose Saramago

Perfect moments, especially when they verge on the sublime have the grave disadvantage of being very short lived, which in fact, being obvious, we would not need to mention were it not that they have a still greater disadvantage, which is that we do not know what to do once they are over. ~ Jose Saramago

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

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women. ~ Jose Saramago

Now, if two men have to walk along together for two or three hours at a time, even if they feel a really strong desire to communicate, they will inevitably, sooner or later, fall into awkward silences and possibly end up loathing each other. One of these men might be unable to resist the temptation to hurl his companion down a steep riverbank. People are quite right when they say that three is god's number, the number of peace and concord. When there are three in a group, one of the three can remain silent for a few minutes without that silence being noticed. Trouble could arise, however, if one of the three men has been walking along plotting how best to get rid of his neighbor in order to make off with his share of the provisions, and then invites the third man in the group to collaborate in this reprehensible scheme, only to be met with the regretful answer, I can't, I'm afraid, I've already agreed to help him kill you. ~ Jose Saramago

Age carries with it a double load of guilt ~ Jose Saramago

In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little. ~ 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

Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow. ~ 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

I know, to be useful," broke in Abel impatiently. "When I said that, I had no idea you would be leaving us so soon. I also said that I couldn't give you advice, and I say the same now. But you're leaving tomorrow and we might never see each other again. I decided that, even if I can't advise you, I can at least tell you that a life without love, a life like the one you described just now, isn't live at all, it's a dung heap, a sewer. ~ Jose Saramago

Blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born. ~ Jose Saramago

The road to self-deception is narrow to begin with, but there's always someone ready to broaden it out, for as the proverb says, self-deception is like eating or scratching, it's all a matter of beginning. ~ Jose Saramago

It is an unwavering rule for those in power that, when it comes to heads, it is best to cut them off before they start thinking, afterwards, it might be too late. ~ Jose Saramago

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. ~ Jose Saramago

What torments people have to go through when they leave the safety of their homes to become embroiled in mad adventures. ~ Jose Saramago

Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas. ~ Jose Saramago

Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions. ~ Jose Saramago

No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together. ~ Jose Saramago

I don't quite grasp your meaning.
Just as I don't quite understand what I am saying. But back to the point ... . ~ Jose Saramago

As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping. ~ Jose Saramago

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

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits. ~ Jose Saramago

The distribution of tasks among the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means that the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas the senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never. ~ Jose Saramago

Blindness was spreading, not like a sudden tide flooding everything and carrying all before it, but like an insidious infiltration of a thousand and one turbulent rivulets which, having slowly drenched the earth, suddenly submerge it completely. ~ Jose Saramago

I have for a long time loved fabulist, imaginative fiction, such as the writing of Italo Calvino, Jose Saramago, Michael Bulgakov, and Salman Rushdie. I also like the magic realist writers, such as Borges and Marquez, and feel that interesting truths can be learned about our world by exploring highly distorted worlds. ~ Alan Lightman

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. ~ Jose Saramago

When you grow up, you'll want to be happy. You don't give a thought to that now, which is why you are happy. The moment you think about it, the moment you want to be happy, you will cease to be happy. Forever. Possibly forever. Do you hear? Forever. The stronger your desire to be happy, the unhappier you will be. Happiness isn't something you can conquer. People will tell you that it is. Don't believe them. Happiness either is or isn't. ~ Jose Saramago

I thought that in order to have got to where we are someone else must have been blind. ~ Jose Saramago

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

Slaves exist to serve us, perhaps we should open them up to see if they carry slaves inside, or open up a monarch to see if he has another monarch in his belly, I'll bet if we met the devil and he allowed us to open him up, we might be surprised to find God jumping out. ~ Jose Saramago

The time for miracles has either passed or not come yet, besides, miracles, genuine miracles, whatever people say, are not such a good idea, if it means destroying the very order of things in order to improve them. ~ Jose Saramago

There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers [...], they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos. ~ 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

[José] Saramago for the last 25 years stood his own with any novelist of the Western world [..] He was the equal of Philip Roth, Gunther Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. His genius was remarkably versatile - he was at once a great comic and a writer of shocking earnestness and grim poignancy. It is hard to believe he will not survive. ~ Harold Bloom

Americans have discovered fear. ~ Jose Saramago