José Saramago

“...for human words are like shadows, and shadows are incapable of explaining light and between shadow and light there is the opaque body from which words are born..”

“If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.”

“Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.”

“A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.”

“Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.”

“Ao contrário do que em geral se pensa, tomar uma decisão é uma das decisões mais fáceis deste mundo, como cabalmente se demonstra pelo facto de não fazermos masi nada que multiplicá-las ao longo de todo o santíssimo dia, porém, e aí esbarramos com o busílis da questão, elas sempre nos vêm a posteriori com os seus problemazinhos particulares, ou, para que fiquemos a entender-nos, com os seus rabos por esfolar, sendo o primeiro deles o nosso grau de capacidade para mantê-las e o segundo o nosso grau de vontade para realizá-las.”

“Tal como a experiência da comunicação tem abundantemente demonstrado, o poder de mobilização da palavra oral, no imediato, em nada inferior ao da palavra escrita, e mesmo, num primeiro momento, talvez mais apta que ela a arrebanhar vontades e multidões, é dotada de um alcance histórico bastante mais limitado, devido a que, com as repetições do discurso, se lhe fatiga com rapidez o fôlego e se lhe desviam os propósitos. Não se vê outra razão para que as leis que nos regem estejam todas escritas.”

“O melhor caminho para uma desculpabilização universal é chegar à conclusão de que, porque toda a gente tem culpas, ninguém é culpado.”

“Ao contrário do que julga o senso comum, as coisas da vontade nunca são simples, o que é simples é a indecisão, a incerteza, a irresolução.”

“we would understand much more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to an assiduous study of its contradictions, instead of wasting time on identities and coherences, seeing as these have a duty to provide their own explanations.”

“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I'm not so sure, You'll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn't work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those rivers don't have just two shores but many, unless each reader is his or her own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching.”

“Death went on, If I'd sent you, with your taste for expeditious methods, the matter would have been resolved, but times have changed a lot lately, and one has to update the means and the systems one uses, to keep up with the new technologies, by using e-mail, for example, I've heard tell that it's the most hygienic way, one that does away with inkblots and fingerprints, besides which it's fast, you just open up outlook express on microsoft and it's gone, the difficulty would be having to work with two separate archives, one for those who use computers and another for those who don't, anyway, we've got plenty of time to think about it, they're always coming out with new models and new designs, with new improved technologies, perhaps I'll try it some day, but until then, I'll continue to write with pen, paper and ink, it has the charm of tradition, and tradition counts for a lot when it comes to dying.”

“I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.”

“I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.”

“Há esperanças que é loucura ter. Pois eu digo-te que se não fossem essas já eu teria desistido da vida.”

“Se antes de cada acto nosso nos puséssemos a prever todas as consequências dele, a pensar nelas a sério, primeiro as imediatas, depois as prováveis, depois as possíveis, depois as imagináveis, não chegaríamos sequer a mover-nos de onde o primeiro pensamento nos tivesse feito parar.”

“Los únicos interesados en cambiar el mundo son los pesimistas, porque los optimistas están encantados con lo que hay.”

“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”

“Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts”

“In the various arts, and above all in that of writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, nor is it now, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all.”

“The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein.”

“As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.”

“Deve-se a construção do convento de Mafra ao rei D. João V, por um voto que fez se lhe nascesse um filho, vão aqui seiscentos homens que não fizeram filho nenhum à rainha e eles é que pagam o voto, que se lixam, com perdão da anacrónica voz.”

“We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.”

“Secondo me non siamo diventati ciechi, secondo me lo siamo. Ciechi che vedono. Ciechi che, pur vedendo, non vedono.”

“Nascemos, e nesse momento é como se tivéssemos firmado um pacto para toda a vida, mas o dia pode chegar em que nos perguntemos Quem assinou isto por mim.”

“With the passage of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the color of our blood and the salt of our tears.”

“Such is our need to shower blame on some distant entity when it is we who lack the courage to face up to what is there before us.”

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

“You might think that after all the shameful capitulations made by the government during the ups and downs of their negotiations with the maphia ... they could sink no lower. Alas, when one advances blindly across the boggy ground of realpolitik, when pragmatism takes up the baton and conducts the orchestra, ignoring what is written in the score, you can be pretty sure that, as the imperative logic of dishonor will show, there are still, after all, a few more steps to descend.”

“You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have”

“...the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.”

“Time and time again one has seen how stories get exaggerated in the telling.”

“Al contrario de lo que se cree, sentido y significado nunca han sido lo mismo, el significado se queda aquí, es directo, literal, explícito, cerrado en sí mismo, unívoco, podríamos decir, mientras que le sentido no es capaz de permanecer quieto, hierve de segundos sentidos, terceros y cuartos, de direcciones radicales que se van dividiendo y subdividiendo en ramas y ramajes hasta que se pierdende vista, el sentido de cada palabra se parece a una estrella cuando se pone a proyectar mareas vivas por el espacio, vientos cósmicos, perturbaciones magnéticas, aflicciones".”

“...a carne é supinamente fraca, e não tanto por sua culpa, pois o espírito, cujo dever, em princípio, seria levantar uma barreira contra todas as tentações, é sempre o primeiro a ceder, a içar a bandeira branca da rendição.”

“A história dos homens é a história dos seus desentendimentos com deus, nem ele nos endente a nós, nem nós o entendemos a ele”

“As the days passed, it became noticeable, in a way that was, at first, imperceptible, that the word blank, as if it had suddenly become obscene or rude, was falling into disuse, that people would employ all kinds of evasions and periphrases to replace it. A blank piece of paper, for example, would be described instead as virgin, a blank on a form that had all its life been a blank became the space provided, blank looks all became vacant instead, students stopped saying that their minds had gone blank, and owned up to the fact that they simply knew nothing about the subject, but the most interesting case of all was the sudden disappearance of the riddle with which, for generations, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors had sought to stimulate the intelligence and deductive powers of children, You can fill me in, draw me and fire me, what am I, and people, reluctant to elicit the word blank from innocent children, justified this by saying that the riddle was far too difficult for those with limited experience of the world.”

“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.”

“...you have to leave the island in order to see the island, that we can't see ourselves unless we become free of ourselves, Unless we escape from ourselves you mean, No, that's not the same thing.”

“Si antes de cada acción, pudiésemos prever todas sus consecuencias,nos pusiésemos a pensar en ellas seriamente, primero en las consecuencias inmediatas, después, las probables, más tarde las posibles, luego las imaginables, no llegaríamos siquiera a movernos de donde el primer pensamiento nos hubiera hecho detenernos.”

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

“O caminho do engano nasce estreito, mas sempre encontrará quem esteja disposto a alargá-lo, digamos que o engano, repetindo a voz popular, é como o comer e o coçar, a questão é começar.”

“Se podes olhar, vê. Se podes ver, repara.”

“The minds of human beings are not always entirely at one with the world in which they live, some people have trouble adjusting to reality, basically they're just weak, confused spirits who use words, sometimes very skillfully, to justify their cowardice.”

“Your questions are false if you already know the answer.”

“Three can eat as cheaply as two, the well-known arithmetic of resignation in any family where a child is expected, now one can say with even greater authority, Ten million can eat as cheaply as five, and with a quiet smile, A nation is nothing but a great big family.”

“when I get to the end of what I’m saying, I have to believe in my having said it, that’s often all that’s needed just as water, flour, and yeast make bread.”

“News is nothing but words, and you can never really tell if words are news.”

“No, I’ve never been to Galicia, Galicia is the land of others”

“In this case, consulting the dictionary would simply mean discovering what one already knew, Dictionaries only provide information that is likely to be useful to everyone”