Quotes By Jose Saramago

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

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.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

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?

I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.

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

I am not a prophet.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

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.

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.

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975.

Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.

Americans have discovered fear.

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.