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

I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments.

Jose 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 ...

Jose Saramago

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those thin...

Jose Saramago

The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.

Jose Saramago

Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.

Jose Saramago

I don't defend the idea of universal love. It has never existed and will never exist.

Jose Saramago

What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?

Jose Saramago

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is.

Jose Saramago

The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.

Jose Saramago

We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.

Jose Saramago

The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.

Jose Saramago

It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.

Jose Saramago

I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been.

Jose Saramago

I always ask two questions: How many countries have military bases in the United States? And in how many countries does the United States not have military bases?

Jose Saramago

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

Jose Saramago

Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts.

Jose Saramago

I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.

Jose Saramago

In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die.

Jose Saramago

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

Jose Saramago

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

Jose Saramago

Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the d...

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