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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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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
Unless
Leave
Free
Order
Become
Mean
Island
Thing
Islands
Escape

More quotes by 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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En ningún momento de la historia, en ningún lugar del planeta, las religiones han servido para que los seres humanos se acerquen unos a los otros. Por el contrario, sólo han servido para separar, para quemar, para torturar. No creo en dios, no lo necesito y además soy buena persona.
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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A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.
Jose Saramago
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There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind of message, I suppose that's it.
Jose Saramago
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The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.
Jose Saramago
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Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.
Jose Saramago
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just like everything else in life, let time take its course and it will find a solution.
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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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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Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make 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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If I could repeat my childhood, I would repeat it exactly as it was, with the poverty, the cold, little food, with the flies and pigs, all that.
Jose Saramago
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With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.
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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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
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In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die.
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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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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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