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Don't be afraid, the darkness you're in is no greater than the darkness inside your own body, they are two darknesses separated by a skin, I bet you've never thought of that, you carry a darkness about with you all the time and that doesn't frighten you ... my dear chap, you have to learn to live with the darkness outside just as you learned to live with the darkness inside.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, All the Names
Today's bread does not eliminate yesterday's hunger, much less that of tomorrow.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
The ear has to be educated if one wishes to appreciate musical sounds, just as the eyes must learn to distinguish the value of words.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
Don’t quibble with the king over pears, let him eat the ripe ones and give you the green ones.
If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?
Blessed be the night, which conceals and protects things fair and foul with the same indifferent mantle.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
No human being can achieve all he or she desires in this life except in dreams, so good night all.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
It is strange how the elderly fall silent when they ought to go on speaking, obliging the young to learn everything from scratch.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
Time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagining that we can catch him out.
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.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, The Paris Review, winter 1998
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.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
A stomach accustomed to hunger is satisfied with very little.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
A woman is essentially a vessel made to be filled.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.
We know that happiness is short-lived, that we fail to cherish it when it is within our grasp and value it only when it has vanished forever.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
In a king, modesty would be a sign of weakness.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
Ah, in every age there is always some new wonder to astound mankind until they grow accustomed to it and lose interest.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
There is nothing healthier for a man than to walk on his own two legs.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Blindness
There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, All the Names
There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, interview, "O Globo", July 2009
Everything in this world can volunteer some reply, what takes up time is posing the questions.
JOSÉ SARAMAGO, Baltasar and Blimunda
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