Quotes by
José Saramago |
1922-2010 , Portuguese writer [Nobel 1998]
Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. Saramago did not achieve widespread recognition and acclaim until he was sixty, with the publication of his fourth novel, Memorial do Convento (1982). In 1995, he won the Camões Prize, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. | 36 quotes | 5,419 visits |
Quotations
| • | Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. (Blindness, 1995) 11 |
| • | We are more our flaws than our qualifications. 7 |
| • | Man is a creature that is constantly “under construction”, but also, in a parallel way, always in a state of perpetual destruction. 7 |
| • | Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes. 6 |
| • | The only thing more terrifying than blindness is being the only one who can see. (Blindness, 1995) 6 |
| • | They say that each person is an island, this is not true, each person is a silence, yes, each with his silence, each with the silence that he is. 6 |
| • | I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing. Blind people who can see, but do not see. (Blindness, 1995) 5 |
| • | Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all. (Nobel Lecture, 1995) 4 |
| • | In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little. (The Cave, 2000) 4 |
| • | It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene. 4 |
| • | This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice. 4 |
| • | To love is probably the best way to have, to have is surely the worst way to love. 4 |
| • | That is the dream of all novelists: that one of their characters will become “somebody”. 3 |
| • | A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended. 3 |
| • | Your questions are fake if you already know the answer. 3 |
| • | A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled. |
| • | If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow? (Blindness, 1995) |
| • | Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered. (The Double) |
| • | The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them. (Blindness, 1995) |
| • | We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other. |
| • | As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping. |
| • | The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud. (The Cave, 2000) |
| • | God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence. |
| • | 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. |
| • | Doesn’t anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer? |
| • | Deep down, the problem is not a God that does not exist, but the religion that proclaims Him. I denounce religions, all religions, as harmful to Humankind. These are harsh words, but one must say them. |
| • | In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead. (Todos os Nomes, 1997) |
| • | This Jerónimo, my grandfather, swineherd and story-teller, feeling death about to arrive and take him, went and said goodbye to the trees in the yard, one by one, embracing them and crying because he knew he wouldn't see them again. (Nobel lecture, 1998) |
| • | That's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both. (The Cave) |
| • | In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness. |
| • | Death is the inventor of God. |
| • | There are no impossible obstacles; there are just stronger and weaker wills, that’s all! |
| • | The worst wall of all is a door that you do not have the key to. |
| • | "Never" is not the opposite of "late". The opposite of "late" is "too late". |
| • | It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power. |
| • | Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt. |
