Quotes by Jose Saramago

About Jose Saramago:

José de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the greatest living novelist" and considers him to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

In a matter of a moment the amount of sand in the upper part of the hour-glass had dwindled dramatically, the tiny grains were rushing through the opening, each grain more eager to leave then the last, time is just like people, sometimes it’s all i...

Jose Saramago

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.

Jose Saramago

The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein.

Jose Saramago

Liking is probably the best form of ownership, and ownership the worst form of liking.

Jose Saramago

He imagined that he was looking for her and couldn't find her anywhere, that the two of them were lost on a vast ship, sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lyin...

Jose Saramago

...sleep is a skilled magician, it changes the proportions of things, the distances between them, it separates people and they're lying next to each other, brings them together and they can barely see one another...

Jose Saramago

a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.

Jose Saramago

...as cartas de amor são rídiculas, isto é o que escreve quando já a morte vem subindo a escada, quando se torna de súbito claro que verdadeiramente ridículo é não ter recebido nunca uma carta de amor.

Jose 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.

Jose Saramago

Certaines relations harmonieuses se créent et durent grâce à un système complexe de menues contre-vérités, de renoncements, une espèce de ballet complice d'attitudes et de postures qui peut se résumer dans un proverbe jamais assez cité, ou p...

Jose 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 prop...

Jose 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.

Jose Saramago

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

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

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

Jose 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.

Jose Saramago

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

Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.

Jose Saramago

To continue living, we have to die. That's the story of humanity - generation after generation - that we are going to die. There's nothing dramatic about death except that one loses one's life.

Jose Saramago

A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.

Jose 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.

Jose Saramago

Author Bio

  • NameJose Saramago
  • DescriptionPortuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature
  • BornNovember 16, 1922
  • DiedJune 18, 2010
  • CountryPortugal
  • ProfessionJournalist; Playwright; Translator; Novelist; Poet; Chronicler; Essayist; Diarist; Literary Critic; Writer
  • WorksThe Gospel According To Jesus Christ; Blindness; Seeing; Death With Interruptions; Cain
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Camões Prize; America Award In Literature