José Saramago Quotes

In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.

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'.

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

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

That night the blind man dreamt that he was blind.

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

We live in a very peculiar world. Democracy isn't discussed, as if it was taken for granted, as if democracy had taken God's place, who is also not discussed.

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

The young have the ability, but lack the wisdom, and the old have the wisdom, but lack the ability.

[...], indeed nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.

The emptiness of old age had caused him to forget that, in matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.

This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice.

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.

No dia seguinte, ninguém morreu.

I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.