José Saramago Quotes

We would know far more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to the close study of its contradictions instead of wasting so much time on similarities and connections, which should anyway, be self-explanatory.

The bread was dry and hard, only a scraping of butter was left, he was out of milk, all he had was some rather mediocre coffee, as we know, a man who had never found a woman who would love him enough to agree to join him in this hovel, such a man, apart from rare exceptions which have no place in this story, will never be more than a poor devil, it's odd that we always say poor devil and never poor god, [...]

Death is the inventor of God.

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.

Now we live in the empire of oil and money — the rest is disguise.

Abençoem-se antes um ao outro, é quanto basta, pudessem ser todas as bênçãos como essa.

A mulher do médico vai lendo os letreiros das ruas, lembra-se de uns, de outros não, e chega um momento em que compreende que se desorientou e perdeu. Não há dúvida, está perdida. Deu uma volta, deu outra, já não reconhece nem a ruas nem os nomes delas, então, desesperada, deixou-se cair no chão sujíssimo, empapado de lama negra, e, vazia de forças, de todas as forças, desatou a chorar. Os cães rodearam-na, farejam os sacos, mas sem convicção, como se já lhes tivesse passado a hora de comer, um deles lambe-lhe a cara, talvez desde pequeno tenha sido habituado a enxugar pratos. A mulher toca-lhe na cabeça, passa-lhe a mão pelo lombo encharcado, e o resto das lágrimas chora-as abraçada a ele.

Jesus then realized he had been brought here under false pretences, as the lamb is led to sacrifice and that his life had been planned for death since the very beginning. Remembering the river of blood and suffering that would flow from his side and flood the entire earth, he called out to the open sky where God could be seen smiling, Men, forgive Him, for He knows not what He has done.

Besides the conversation of women, it is dreams that keep the world in orbit. But dreams also form a diadem of moons, therefore the sky is that splendour inside a man's head, if his head is not, in fact, his own unique sky.

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

...eu já estava na vigésima parte do livro, triste, quando senti que o livro podia ser escrito. Percebi que só seria capaz de escrevê-lo se o fizesse como se contasse. Não passando para a escrita o chamado discurso oral, porque isso é impossível, mas introduzindo na escrita um me-canismo de aparente prolixidade, aparente desor-ganização do discurso. Digo aparente porque sei o trabalho que me deu fazer de conta que era tudo assim.

Time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagination that we can catch him out.

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.

I was reading even before I could spell properly, even though I couldn't necessarily understand what I was reading. Being able to identify a word I knew was like finding a signpost on the road telling me I was on the right path, heading in the right direction. And so it was, in this rather unusual way, Diário by Diário, month by month, pretending not to hear the jokey comments made by the adults in the house, who were amused by the way I would stare at the newspaper as if at a wall, that my moment to astonish them finally came, when, one day, nervous but triumphant, I read out loud, in one go, without hesitation, several consecutive lines of print.

None of his colleagues noticed who had arrived, they responded to his greetings as they always did, Good morning, Senhor José, they said and they did not know to whom they were speaking.