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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

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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
Trying
Afraid
Always
Dead
Turn
Dies
Excused
Turns
Beforehand
Idea
Excuses
Ideas
Excuse
Find
Asking

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
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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.
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A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.
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We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.
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No, there are three people in a marriage, there's the woman, there's the man, and there's what I call the third person, the most important, the person who is composed of the man and woman together.
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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.
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Each part in itself constitutes the whole to which it belongs.
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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.
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Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters...
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We never consider that the things dogs know about us are things of which we have not the faintest notion.
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Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.
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Earthenware is like people, it needs to be well treated.
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A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.
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There is relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it.
Jose Saramago
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There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.
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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.
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