Jose Saramago

"The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others."

"Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer."

"Americans have discovered fear."

"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."

"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."

"I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are."