Jose Saramago

Even death, faced with the option of death or life, she would choose life.

... that's how life should be, when one person loses heart, the other must have heart and courage enough for both.

...we confidently say that it's not worth trying to reach any conclusions merely because we decide to stop halfway along the path that would lead us straight to them.

The history of mankind is the history of our misunderstandings with god, for he doesn't understand us, and we don't understand him.

...the human being to lack that second skin we call egoism has not yet been born, it lasts much longer than the other one, that bleeds so readily.

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

If you don't write your books, nobody else will do it for you. No one else has lived your life.

I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists, to understand the stars or else to discover them deep within the aspirations of certain characters, those who sometimes, on certain evenings, escape from the pages and walk among us humans, perhaps the most human of us all.

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

As so often happens, the thing left undone tires you most of all, you only feel rested when it has been accomplished.

With the passing of time, as well as the social evolution and genetic exchange, we ended up putting our conscience in the colour of blood and in the salt of tears, and, as if that were not enough, we made our eyes into a kind of mirror turned inwards, with the result that they often show without reserve what we are verbally trying to deny.

A tree weeps when cut down, a dog howls when beaten, but a man matures when offended.

Words that come from the heart are never spoken, they get caught in the throat and can only be read in ones's eyes.

we would understand much more about life’s complexities if we applied ourselves to an assiduous study of its contradictions, instead of wasting time on identities and coherences, seeing as these have a duty to provide their own explanations.

The virtue of maps, they show what can be done with limited space, they foresee that everything can happen therein.

blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.

We all have our moments of weakness, just as well that we are still capable of weeping, tears are often our salvation, there are times when we would die if we did not weep - Blindness

Men are all the same, they think that because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women.

Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.

...this is the way fate usually treats us, it's right there behind us, it has already reached out a hand to touch us on the shoulder while we're still muttering to ourselves, It's all over, that's it, who cares anyhow.

The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day.