Jose Saramago

I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.

Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer.

We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations.

Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties.

When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day.

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.

Not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding.

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story.

I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends.

Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets.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.

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers.

Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.

We say Fine, even though we may be dying, and this is commonly known as taking one's courage in both hands, a phenomenon that has only been observed in the human species.

I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it.

I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.

There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything.

I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.

A journey never ends. Only the travellers end.

One can show no greater respect than to weep for a stranger.