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Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.

Jose Saramago

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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
Time
Decided
Possibility
Worth
Writer
Literature
Faintest
Jobs
Devote
Find
Findings
Without
Finding

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet.
Jose Saramago
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The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.
Jose Saramago
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...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.
Jose Saramago
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Every thing in life is a uniform the only time our bodies are truly in civilian dress is when we're naked.
Jose Saramago
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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
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One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.
Jose Saramago
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What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?
Jose Saramago
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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
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You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have
Jose Saramago
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We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.
Jose Saramago
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God, the devil, good, evil, it's all in our heads, not in Heaven or Hell, which we also invented. We do not realize that, having invented God, we immediately became His slaves.
Jose Saramago
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Nothing so tires a person as having to struggle, not with himself, but with an abstraction.
Jose Saramago
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When all is said and done, what is clear is that all lives end before their time.
Jose Saramago
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That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.
Jose Saramago
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Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.
Jose Saramago
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Death is the inventor of God.
Jose Saramago
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We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.
Jose Saramago
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The beginning is never the clear, precise end of a thread, the beginning is a long, painfully slow process that requires time and patience in order to find out in which direction it is heading, a process that feels its way along the path ahead like a blind man the beginning is just the beginning, what came before is nigh on worthless.
Jose Saramago
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Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.
Jose Saramago
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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