José Saramago Quotes

Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is.

Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.

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.

A man must earn his daily bread by some means some-where, and if his bread fails to nourish his soul, at least his body will be nourished while his soul suffers.

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.

... we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people ...

Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it.

The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralisation of the overly curious mind through faith.

Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the earth.

Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.

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.

En su habitación del hotel la muerte, desnuda, está delante del espejo. No sabe quién es.

Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.

God will save you.
Surely you're forgetting that God saves souls rather than bodies.

À igreja nunca se lhe pediu que explicasse fosse o que fosse, a nossa outra especialidade, além da balística, tem sido neutralizar, pela fé, o espírito curioso.

Assim é, mas a vantagem da igreja é que, embora às vezes o não pareça, ao gerir o que está no alto, governa o que está em baixo.

blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.

... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.

Sólo un sentido común con imaginación de poeta podría haber sido el inventor de la rueda.

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.