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Jose Saramago

Jose Saramago Quotes

Writer

Portuguese writer known for his unique narrative style and profound philosophical reflections. His notable works include 'The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis' and 'Blindness'.

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Famous Jose Saramago Quotes

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

World Humans Kind Doe Human Beings Machines Killing Mars Colonizing Mars

Author: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.”

Facts Pleasure Our Lives Fascination Facts Of Life Morbid

Author:Jose Saramago

“I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.”

Poet Novelists Poetic Playwright Essayists

Author:Jose Saramago

“I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends.”

Persons Habit Prize Receiving Nobel Nobel Prize Regularity Gmos

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Writing Able Order Travel Degrees Destination Funny Travel Select Usefulness

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Knows Writing Novel Know How Effects Novelists Essays Essayists

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Needs Use Might Language Tiny Bedtime

Author:Jose Saramago

“The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.”

Space Novel Sea Rivers Filled Genre Genre Is Literary Genre

Author:Jose Saramago

“The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan.”

Needs Middle Military East Middle East Easter Asia Gateways Installation Uzbekistan

Author:Jose Saramago

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

Writing Novel Example Continuity

Author: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.”

World Wells America Process Forget Known Effects Positive Planets Aspect Deny Usa Well Known Presuming

Author:Jose Saramago

“At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before.”

World Years Ends Left Company Letters Productions Managers Publishing

Author: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.”

Thinking Way Political Natural Revolution Critical Active Resistance Atmosphere Dictatorship Adolescence Marxism Formation Ideological

Author: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.”

People Ifs Knows World Way Writing Wells Kind I Can Book Political Social Levels Imagine This World Benefits Who I Am Involvement Political Involvement

Author:Jose Saramago

“I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes, and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year.”

Writing Years Done School Mistake Class Thirds Primaries Fourth Pupils Spelling Primary School Spelling Mistakes

Author:Jose Saramago

“I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon.”

Born Hundred Rivers East Village Peasants Provinces Small Villages North East

Author: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.”

Writing Believe Facts Artist I Believe Novel Influence Citizens Musician Paint Painter Novelists

Author: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.”

Way Important Certain Results Revolution Periods Consequence November Coups Literary Works

Author:Jose Saramago

“The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.”

World Years Has Beens Ends Lasts Process Changed Civilization September September 11 Process Of Change

Author:Jose Saramago

“Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard.”

America Ambition Regard Doctrine Empires Regions Latin Latin America Backyards Be Considerate

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

World Two Shows Born Fine Birth My Family Thanks Officials Fraud Documents Petty November Two Days

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

World Littles Different Laughing Movement Capitalism International Organisation Different Worlds Proclaiming Coordinates

Author:Jose Saramago

“Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.”

Jobs Literature Possibility Findings Decided

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Doe Use Dream Seems Law Desire Humanity Universe Names Understanding Aim Objectives Indifferent Contradictory

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Humans May Hands Known Dying Fine Species Phenomenon Human Species

Author:Jose Saramago

“but it is also true, if this brings her any consolation, that if, before every action, we were to begin weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probably, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt.”

Ifs Thinking Should Firsts Action Moving Consequence Consolation Earnest Halt Weighing

Author:Jose Saramago

“a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.”

Men Way Force Mets My Friends Gallows

Author:Jose Saramago

“Words are like that, they deceive, they pile up, it seems they do not know where to go, and, suddenly, because of two or three or four that suddenly come out, simple in themselves, a personal pronoun, an adverb, an adjective, we have the excitement of seeing them coming irresistibly to the surface through the skin and the eyes and upsetting the composure of our feelings, sometimes the nerves that can not bear it any longer, they put up with a great deal, they put up with everything, it was as if they were wearing armor, we might say.”

Ifs Knows Two Sometimes Feelings Seems Might Eye Three Simple Deals Four Seeing Bears Skins Surface Upset Excitement Nerves Deceiving Can Not Armor Adjectives Composure Pronouns Adverbs

Author:Jose Saramago

“The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.”

Left Sun Corners Rectangles

Author:Jose Saramago

“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?”

Ifs World May Asks Born Our Lives This World Behalf Pact

Author:Jose Saramago

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

Ifs Certain Trouble Understood

Author:Jose Saramago

“Oh, I'm not just going too far, I've arrived.”

Author:Jose Saramago

“. . . 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.”

Ifs World Way Done Changing The World Pessimism Transformed Optimist Never Change

Author:Jose Saramago

“The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day.”

Matter Done Might Lasts Life Is Stones Load Last Day Another Day Actually Living

Author: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.”

Way Stills Hands Care Behinds Fate Treats Shoulders Who Cares Muttering

Author:Jose Saramago

“Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.”

Love Feels Trying Humans Age Practice Communication Speech Illusion Definitions Tongue Defects Human Experience

Author:Jose Saramago

“We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.”

Author: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.”

Thinking Knows Men Belly

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Life Is Space Consequence Life Is Like Deserving

Author:Jose Saramago

“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”

Ifs Wells Stills Moments Dies Tears Capable Weakness Salvation Blindness Weeping Moments Of Weakness

Author:Jose Saramago

“Reading is probably another way of being in a place.”

Way Reading Another Way

Author:Jose Saramago

“Your questions are false if you already know the answer.”

Ifs Knows Answers

Author: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.”

People World Mind Humans Sometimes Use Reality Spirit Human Beings Trouble Weak Confused Justify Cowardice Adjusting

Author:Jose Saramago

“blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.”

Persons Matter Eye Born Blindness

Author:Jose Saramago

“...the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.”

Body Fall Habit Relief Reaching

Author:Jose Saramago

“You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have”

Knows Names Given

Author:Jose Saramago

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

Artistic Titles Hierarchy Stigma Protocol Plebeians

Author:Jose Saramago

“With the passage of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of our blood and the salt of our tears.”

Wells Social Blood Tears Color Evolution Conscience Passages Salt Passage Of Time

Author:Jose Saramago

“We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.”

Knows Dog Notion

Author:Jose Saramago

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

Done Shows Happens Space Virtue Maps

Author:Jose Saramago

About the Author

Born: November 16, 1922
Died: June 18, 2010
Known for: Writer
Quotes: 211

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