José Saramago Quotes
November 16, 1922 – June 18, 2010
More José Saramago Quotes
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 Saramago— ÉPOCA Interview (in Portuguese), São Paulo, 2005.
The universe has no news of our existence.
José Saramago— O universo não tem notícia da nossa existência.
— Interview with Adelino Gomes, Público, 13 November, 2005.
There are those who deny me the right to speak of God, because I am not a believer. And I say that I have every right in the world. I want to talk about God because it is a problem that affects all humanity.
José Saramago— Interview with "El País", 2009.
In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.
José Saramago— p. 181 (All the Names (1997))
Even the strongest spirits have the moments of irresistible weakness
José Saramago— The Cave p. 15 (Vintage 2003)
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.
José Saramago— A vida é assim, está cheia de palavras que não valem a pena, ou que valeram e já não valem, cada uma que ainda formos dizendo tirará o lugar a outra mais merecedora, que o seria não tanto por si mesma, mas pelas consequências de tê-la dito.
— The Cave p. 28 (Vintage 2003)
A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo'.
José Saramago— Quoted in José Saramago: il bagaglio dello scrittore?, page 41, by Giulia Lanciani, published by Bulzoni, 1996 ISBN 8871199332, 9788871199337 (256 pages).
It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.
José Saramago— Não é a pornografia que é obscena, é a fome que é obscena. Interview Programa Jô Soares, 1997.
Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?
José Saramago— Interview with Edney Silvestre, 2007.
If 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 Saramago— Interview with Edney Silvestre, 2007.
There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.
José Saramago— Interview with "O Globo", July 2009.
I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me.
José Saramago— Interview with "O Globo", July 2009.
Death is the inventor of God.
José Saramago— Interview with "El País", 2009. [1]
God, 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 Saramago— Interview with "El País", 2009.
Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.
José Saramago— p. 126 (Blindness (1995))
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
José Saramago— p. 276 (Blindness (1995))
Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.
José Saramago— p. 290 (Blindness (1995))
No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together.
José Saramago— The woman in the ground floor flat
Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created.
José Saramago— The Registrar
[...] the skin is only what we want others to see of us, underneath it not even we know who we are, [...]
José Saramago— Senhor José's ceiling
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...
José Saramago— Referring to his grandfather, Jerónimo Meirinho.
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.
José Saramago— p. 29 (Vintage 2003)
He spent the whole time sitting on a log in the woodshed, sometimes starting straight ahead with the fixity of a blind man who knows that even if he turns his head in the other direction he will still not see anything,
José Saramago— p. 30 (Vintage 2003)
At this time of life even a day makes a difference, the only saving grace is that sometimes things improve.
José Saramago— p. 43 (Vintage 2003)
He felt very tired, not from the mental effort, but because he had suddenly seen what the world was like, how there are many lies and truths,
José Saramago— p. 73 (Vintage 2003)
After all, we are always on time, behind time, in time, but never out of time, no matter how often we are told that we are.
José Saramago— p. 73 (Vintage 2003)
Don’t quibble with the king over pears, let him eat the ripe ones and give you the green ones.
José Saramago— The Cave (2000)
It’s the old who age a day every hour
José Saramago— The Cave p. 85 (Vintage 2003)
