Jose Saramago (1922 – 2010)
Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist.
That it’s possible not to see a lie even when it’s in front of us.
There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.
Don’t quibble with the king over pears, let him eat the ripe ones and give you the green ones.
[...], indeed nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.
Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.
[...] the skin is only what we want others to see of us, underneath it not even we know who we are, [...]
... because contrary to what people say, two weaknesses don't make for a still greater weakness, but for renewed strength ...
What the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over.
Lord knows why they depict death with wings when death is everywhere.
Very few people are aware that in each of our fingers, located somewhere between the firs phalange, the mesophalange and the metaphalange, there is a tiny brain. [...] It should be noted that fingers are without brains, these develop gradually with the passage of time and with the help of what the eyes see…. That is why the fingers have always excelled at uncovering what is concealed.
If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.
In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.
The distribution of tasks among the various employees follows a simple rule, which is that the duty of the members of each category is to do as much work as they possibly can, so that only a small part of that work need be passed to the category above. This means that the clerks are obliged to work without cease from morning to night, whereas the senior clerks do so only now and then, the deputies very rarely, and the Registrar almost never.
The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.