José Saramago quotes - page 2

There is relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it. (José Saramago)
We 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. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
Lord knows why they depict death with wings when death is everywhere. View quote
José Saramago
Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated. View quote
José Saramago
The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterwards. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José 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. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
The best way to killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud. View quote
José Saramago
Age carries with it a double load of guilt. (José Saramago)
Every thing in life is a uniform; the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we're naked. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
I believe that I've been asked all possible questions. I, myself, if I were a journalist, would not know what to ask me. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
In 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. View quote
José Saramago
[...], indeed nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction. View quote
José Saramago
Globalization is a form of totalitarianism... It is the rich who rule, and the poor live as they can. View quote
José Saramago
There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world. View quote
José Saramago
I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do. (José Saramago)
Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters. View quote
José Saramago
The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels. View quote
José Saramago
It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene. View quote
José 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. View quote
José Saramago