Jose Saramago Quotes - Page 5

Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

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

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there?

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep - Blindness

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

The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralisation of the overly curious mind through faith.

Death ... doesn't take her eyes off us for a minute, so much so that even those who are not yet due to die feel her gaze pursuing them constantly.

. . . if there is a way for the world to be transformed for the better, it can only be done by pessimism; optimists will never change the world for the better.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.

We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.

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

En ningún momento de la historia, en ningún lugar del planeta, las religiones han servido para que los seres humanos se acerquen unos a los otros. Por el contrario, sólo han servido para separar, para quemar, para torturar. No creo en dios, no lo necesito y además soy buena persona.

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

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.

Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.

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.

It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.

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.

We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.

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

We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow.

The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words.