Quote

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.

Jose Saramago

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jose Saramago
Age: 87 †
Born: 1922
Born: November 16
Died: 2010
Died: June 18
Chronicler
Diarist
Dramaturge
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
Writer
Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico
Jose Saramago
Book
Started
Lisbon
Public
Frequent
Books
Refined
Reading
Developed
Help
Curiosity
Learn
Library
Helping
Except
Home
Taste

More quotes by Jose Saramago

Image
There are those who deny me the right to speak of God, because I am not a believer. And I say that I have every right in the world. I want to talk about God because it is a problem that affects all humanity.
Jose Saramago
Image
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.
Jose Saramago
Image
Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.
Jose Saramago
Image
... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.
Jose Saramago
Image
This is the effect of panic, a natural effect, you could say that animal nature is like this, plant life would behave in exactly the same way, too, if it did not have all those roots to hold it in the ground, and how nice it would be to see the trees of the forest fleeing the flames.
Jose Saramago
Image
A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo.'
Jose Saramago
Image
Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two days later, on the 18th. It was thanks to this petty fraud that my family escaped from paying the fine for not having registered my birth at the proper legal time.
Jose Saramago
Image
It is strange how the elderly fall silent when they ought to go on speaking, obliging the young to learn everything from scratch.
Jose Saramago
Image
We are so afraid of the idea of having to die... that we always try to find excuses for the dead, as if we were asking beforehand to be excused when it is our turn.
Jose Saramago
Image
Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.
Jose Saramago
Image
The worst pain ... isn't the pain you feel at the time, it's the pain you feel later on when there's nothing you can do about it, They say that time heals all wounds, But we never live long enough to test that theory.
Jose Saramago
Image
Dignity has no price ... when someone starts making small concessions, in the end life loses all meaning.
Jose Saramago
Image
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
Image
Why did we become blind, I don't know, perhaps one day we'll find out, Do you want me to tell you what I think, Yes, do, 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.
Jose Saramago
Image
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
Image
The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.
Jose Saramago
Image
As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.
Jose Saramago
Image
Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.
Jose Saramago
Image
Blind people do not need a name, I am my voice, nothing else matters.
Jose Saramago
Image
When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time.
Jose Saramago