Writer Quotes by José Saramago

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

— Jose Saramago

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

— Jose Saramago

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

— Jose Saramago

Reading is probably another way of being in a place.

— Jose Saramago

That is the dream of all novelists-that one of their characters will become 'somebody.'

— Jose Saramago

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

— Jose Saramago

I write to try to understand, and because I have nothing better to do.

— Jose Saramago

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how…

— Jose Saramago

I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except…

— Jose Saramago

There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is, and if the book has any kind…

— Jose Saramago

Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out…

— Jose Saramago

A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book,…

— Jose Saramago

“A writer is just like anyone else, he cannot know everything, nor can he experience everything, he must ask and imagine,”

— José Saramago

“A letter is a most hazardous business, the written word allows no indecision, either distance or familiarity will emphasize the tone the…

— José Saramago

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by…

— Jose Saramago

Every novel is like this, desperation, a frustrated attempt to save something of the past. Except that it still has not been…

— Jose Saramago

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the…

— Jose Saramago

For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have…

— Jose Saramago

People might ask me, What do you propose instead? I propose nothing. I am a mere novelist, I just write about the…

— Jose Saramago

I consider books to be good for our health, and also our spirits, and they help us to become poets or scientists,…

— Jose Saramago

In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the…

— Jose Saramago

“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I'm…

— Jose Saramago

For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have…

— Jose Saramago

“...indeed it is in the General Cemetery that the results of progress are set out before the eyes of the studious or…

— José Saramago