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I don't doubt that a man can live perfectly well on his own, but I'm convinced that he begins to die as soon as he closes the door of his house behind him.

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
Wells
Soon
Well
Doors
Men
Behinds
Closes
Behind
Perfectly
Doubt
Loneliness
Dies
Begins
House
Convinced
Live
Door

More quotes by Jose Saramago

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Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life.
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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.
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There are those who deny me the right to speak of God, because I am not a believer. And I say that I have every right in the world. I want to talk about God because it is a problem that affects all humanity.
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a man was on his way to the gallows when he met another, who asked him: where are you going, my friend? and the condemned man replied: i'm not going anywhere. they're taking me by force.
Jose Saramago
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A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.
Jose Saramago
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You know the name you were given, you do not know the name that you have
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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.
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The wise man contents himself with what he has, until such time as he invents something better.
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Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.
Jose Saramago
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I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes, and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year.
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It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.
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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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Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.
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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Forgive me if what has seemed little to you, to me is all.
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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Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up.
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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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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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