Jose Saramago
Jose Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE, was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the greatest living novelist" and considers him to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone...
NationalityPortuguese
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth16 November 1922
CountryPortugal
It would not be a question of censoring oneself, but of using common sense.
Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.
One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.
A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.
This is how everyone has to begin, men who have never known a woman, women who have never known a man, until the day comes for the one who knows to teach the one who does not
The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.
It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people.
Words have their own hierarchy, their own protocol, their own artistic titles, their own plebeian stigmas.
... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.
Strictly speaking, we do not make decisions. Decisions make us.
Often when you ask for one thing you receive another, this is the mysterious thing about prayer, we address them to heaven with some private intention, but they choose their own path, sometimes they delay, allowing other prayers to overtake them, frequently they overlap and become hybrid prayers of dubious origin, which quarrel and argue among themselves.
I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.
...in matters of feeling and of the heart, too much is always better than too little.
The possibility of the impossible, dreams and illusions, are the subject of my novels.