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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.

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
Like
Incapable
Shadow
Words
Born
Light
Body
Opaque
Human
Explaining
Humans
Shadows

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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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.
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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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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
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Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.
Jose Saramago
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I don't think it is worth explaining how a character's nose or chin looks. It is my feeling that readers will prefer to construct, little by little, their own character—the author will do well to entrust the reader with this part of the work.
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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The sun appears in one of the upper corners of the rectangle, on the left of anyone looking at the picture.
Jose Saramago
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Death is the inventor of God.
Jose Saramago
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Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.
Jose Saramago
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If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.
Jose Saramago
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The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.
Jose Saramago
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Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.
Jose Saramago
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The church has never been asked to explain anything, our speciality, along with ballistics, has always been the neutralisation of the overly curious mind through faith.
Jose Saramago
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As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.
Jose Saramago
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The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.
Jose Saramago
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I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are.
Jose Saramago
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Chaos is order yet undeciphered.
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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Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat.
Jose Saramago
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It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.
Jose Saramago