Jose Saramago Quotes - Page 8

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• I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.

  Jose Saramago

  Loneliness, Men, Doors

  "The Cave" by Jose Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costa, Vintage, (p. 29), 2003.

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Thinking, Political, Atmosphere

  "Interview with Jose Saramago, Author of Blindness". Political Affairs Magazine Interview, www.politicalaffairs.net. March 2006.

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Rivers, Small Villages, East

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Years, Letters, World

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

  Jose Saramago

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

  Jose Saramago

  Fall, Relief, Body

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Eye, Simple, Two

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Mistake, School, Writing

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• I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.

  Jose Saramago

  Reading, Book, Home

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• The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others.

  Jose Saramago

  Attitude, Haughtiness, Aliens

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• ...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.

  Jose Saramago

  Skins, Lasts, Born

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• We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.

  Jose Saramago

  Ideas, Trying, Asking

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• anyone who gets up early by inclination or has been forced to rise early out of necessity finds it intolerable that others should go on sleeping soundly

  Jose Saramago

  Sleep, Up Early, Goes On

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• I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me.

  Jose Saramago

  Believe, Ask Me, Journalist

  O Globo Interview, July 2009.

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• The distribution of tasks among the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means that the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas the senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.

  Jose Saramago

  Senior, Morning, Mean

  "All the Names" by Jose Saramago, tr. Margaret Jull Costam London: The Harvill Press, (p. 2), 1999.

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• Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

  Jose Saramago

  Hymns, Political, Moments

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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• I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.

  Jose Saramago

  Stars, Book, Character

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• Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then to the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, no one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind.

  Jose Saramago

  Men, Doors, Judging

  "Blindness" by Jose Saramago, (p. 2), 1995.

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• ...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.

  Jose Saramago

  Fear, Trying, Path

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• I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been.

  Jose Saramago

  Conviction, Leftists, Persons

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Latin, Ambition, America

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Years, Civilization, September 11

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Important, Way, Revolution

  "Interview with Jose Saramago, Author of Blindness". Political Affairs Magazine Interview, www.politicalaffairs.net. March 2006.

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Two, World, November

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• 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.

  Jose Saramago

  Believe, Writing, Artist

  "Still a street-fighting man". Interview with Stephanie Merritt, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2006.

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