Jose Saramago Quotes & Sayings (Page 4)

“I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits.”

“Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974.”

“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.”

“Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.”

“Americans have discovered fear.”

“A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death.”

“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.”

“I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.”

“I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.”

“I don't defend the idea of universal love. It has never existed and will never exist.”