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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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All Ifs World People Knows Men Writing Needs Humans Way Littles Doe Ends Born Eye Order Persons Wells Blind Moments Novel

Famous Jose Saramago Quotes

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

Ifs Writing Secret

Author: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. It is nothing more than this.”

Writing Two Important Stories Jobs Fronts Two Things

Author:Jose Saramago

“People might ask me, What do you propose instead? I propose nothing. I am a mere novelist, I just write about the world as I see it. It is not my job to transform it. I cannot transform it all by myself, and I wouldn't even know how to. I limit myself to saying what I believe the world to be.”

People Knows World Writing Believe Might Jobs Asks I Believe Know How Limits Mere Ask Me Novelists Propose

Author:Jose Saramago

“Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.”

Ifs Writing Persons I Can Sometimes Able Novel Four Feet Produce Chairs Stable Balanced

Author:Jose Saramago

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

Writing Trying

Author:Jose Saramago

“The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife.”

Men Writing Stills Whole Left Half Morning Four Wife Land Fields Promise Whole Life Clock Dozen Pigs New Day Wisest Fertility Pastures Wisest Man Pallets

Author:Jose Saramago

“I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.”

Way Writing Humans Literature Doubt Positive Materials Hero Models Uncertainty Productive Copies Exhausted Appreciated Cliche Raw Materials Perplexity

Author:Jose Saramago

“The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.”

Men Writing Whole Whole Life Wisest Wisest Man

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

“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 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

“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

“Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels.”

Men Writing Stills Past Forget Novel Frustrated Desperation Impossibility Forgetfulness

Author:Jose Saramago

“If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.”

Ifs Writing Book

Author:Jose Saramago

“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.”

Writing Ends Suffering Habit Normal Creating Pages Block Odd Blank Anguish Writer's Block Blank Pages

Author:Jose Saramago

About the Author

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

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