The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them. Jose Saramago More Quotes by Jose Saramago More Quotes From Jose Saramago I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him. Jose Saramago lonelinessdoorsmen The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels. Jose Saramago illusiondreamimpossible 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 hymnsgovernmentreality At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before. Jose Saramago lettersworldyears Consciences keep silence more often than they should, that's why laws were created. Jose Saramago silenceshouldlaw The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. At four o'clock in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered over French lands, he got up from his pallet and left for the fields, taking to pasture the half-dozen pigs whose fertility nourished him and his wife. Jose Saramago writingmorningmen Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels. Jose Saramago writingmenpast 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 militarytwocountry From literature to ecology, from the escape velocity of galaxies to the greenhouse effect, from garbage disposal methods to traffic jams, everything is discussed in our world. But the democratic system, as if it were a given fact, untouchable by nature until the end of time, we don't discuss that. Jose Saramago garbage-disposalour-worldjam This must be what it means to be a ghost, being certain that life exists, because your four senses say so, and yet unable to see it. Jose Saramago fourghostmean The only time we can talk about death is while we're alive, not afterwards. Jose Saramago only-timealive We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever. Jose Saramago failingforeverhappiness 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 dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974. Jose Saramago atmospherepoliticalthinking I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it. Jose Saramago ifssecretwriting 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. Jose Saramago deservinglife-is-likespace Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow. Jose Saramago yesterdaydoetoday No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together. Jose Saramago marriagemenpeople For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me. It is nothing more than this. Jose Saramago writingjobstwo 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 small-villageseastrivers Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas. Jose Saramago hierarchyartistictitles
