I'm not pessimistic. It is the world that is terrible. How can we be optimistic in the face of a planet where people live so badly, nature is being destroyed and the dominant empire is money?
José SaramagoIn order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.
José SaramagoLife 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.
José SaramagoIt is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.
José SaramagoThe question suddenly came into my head, 'And if we were all blind?' And then immediately, as if answering myself, 'But we are all blind.'
José SaramagoSometimes 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.
José SaramagoWe live in a very peculiar world. Democracy isn't discussed, as if it was taken for granted, as if democracy had taken God's place, who is also not discussed.
José SaramagoIf I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.
José SaramagoGlobalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can.
José SaramagoI write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.
José SaramagoWe humans are, at bottom, carriers of the time, because we take it with us, we use it, sometimes we waste it and sometimes something remains, though everything is doomed to oblivion.
José SaramagoGod, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.
José SaramagoThe worst thing about death is that you once were, and now you are not.
José Saramago...Jesus slowly turned to look at her and said, I have never been with a woman. Mary held his hands, This is how everyone has to begin, men who have never known a woman, women who have never known a man, until the day comes for the one who knows to teach the one who does not.
José SaramagoYou know the name you were given,You do not know the name you have
José SaramagoNo life is without its lies.
José SaramagoThe 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...
José SaramagoIt is true what people say, the young have the ability, but lack the wisdom, and the old have the wisdom, but lack the ability.
José SaramagoDestiny isn’t taken in by people trying to make what came first come afterwards.
José SaramagoEven the strongest spirits have the moments of irresistible weakness
José SaramagoAt this time of life even a day makes a difference, the only saving grace is that sometimes things improve.
José SaramagoThe beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man. The beginning is just the beginning, what came before is night on worthless.
José SaramagoIn general, fakirs, like scribes and potters, are sitting down, when he’s standing up, a fakir is just like an other man, and sitting down, he’ll be smaller than the others,
José SaramagoThe best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.
José SaramagoEvery thing in life is a uniform; the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we’re naked.
José SaramagoCreating is always so much more stimulating than destroying.
José Saramago