José Saramago quotes - page 8

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day. (José Saramago)
For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me. View quote
José Saramago
I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is. View quote
José Saramago
I am not a prophet. View quote
José Saramago
Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties. View quote
José Saramago
Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
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. View quote
José Saramago
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. (José Saramago)
In matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little. View quote
José Saramago
Reading is probably another way of being in a place. View quote
José Saramago
Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king. View quote
José Saramago
Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking. View quote
José Saramago
You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives. View quote
José Saramago
Chaos is order yet undeciphered. View quote
José Saramago
When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time. View quote
José Saramago
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... View quote
José Saramago
Besides the conversation of women, it is dreams that keep the world in orbit. But dreams also form a diadem of moons, therefore the sky is that splendour inside a man's head, if his head is not, in fact, his own unique sky. View quote
José Saramago
Privatize everything, privatize the sea and the sky, privatize the water and the air, privatize justice and the law, privatize the passing cloud, privatize the dream, especially if it's during the day and open eyed. And finally, for the embellishment of so many privatizations, privatize the States, surrender once and for all their exploitation to private companies through international share offering. There lies the salvation of the world... and, while you're at it, privatize your whore mothers. (José Saramago)