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

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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all stories are like those about the creation of the universe, no one was there, no one witnessed anything, yet everyone knows what happened.
Jose Saramago
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The time for miracles has either passed or not come yet, besides, miracles, genuine miracles, whatever people say, are not such a good idea, if it means destroying the very order of things in order to improve them.
Jose Saramago
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Death is the inventor of God.
Jose Saramago
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Every second that passes is like a door that opens to allow in what has not yet happened, what we call the future, but, to challenge the contradictory nature of what we have just said, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the future is just an immense void, that the future is just the time on which the eternal present feeds.
Jose Saramago
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anyone who gets up early by inclination or has been forced to rise early out of necessity finds it intolerable that others should go on sleeping soundly
Jose Saramago
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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
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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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In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness.
Jose Saramago
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Doesn't anybody understand that killing in the name of God only makes Him a murderer?
Jose Saramago
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The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.
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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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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That it's possible not to see a lie even when it's in front of us.
Jose Saramago
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...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.
Jose Saramago
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We've all had our moments of weakness, and if we manage to get through today without any, we'll be sure to have some tomorrow.
Jose Saramago
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People might ask me, What do you propose instead? I propose nothing. I am a mere novelist, I just write about the world as I see it. It is not my job to transform it. I cannot transform it all by myself, and I wouldn't even know how to. I limit myself to saying what I believe the world to be.
Jose Saramago
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Each day is a little bit of history
Jose Saramago
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We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.
Jose Saramago
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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
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As my cat would say, all hours are good for sleeping.
Jose Saramago