José Saramago

“Interview with El País (2002); cited in Princípios (Editora Anita Garibaldi, 2002), p. 88; English translation taken from Phillips The World Turned Upside Down (2010), p. 207.”

“Sometimes I say that writing a novel is the same as constructing a chair: a person must be able to sit in it, to be balanced on it. If I can produce a great chair, even better. But above all I have to make sure that it has four stable feet. Interview with Katherine Vaz, José Saramago , BOMB Magazine , June 2001.”

“On the idea for his next novel ( Blindness ), which came to him while sitting in a restaurant; New York Times interview with Alan Riding (1998), as quoted in Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies , 6th Edition (Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture, 2001), p. 131.”

“Um dia, sentado à mesa, pensei: E se fôssemos todos cegos? Imediatamente me veio a resposta: Nós somos todos cegos. The question suddenly came into my head, 'And if we were all blind?' And then immediately, as if answering myself, 'But we are all blind.'”

“Interview Programa Jô Soares , 1997.”

“Não é a pornografia que é obscena, é a fome que é obscena It is not pornography that is obscene, it is hunger that is obscene.”

“A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo'. Quoted in José Saramago: il bagaglio dello scrittore ‎, page 41, by Giulia Lanciani, published by Bulzoni, 1996 ISBN 8871199332 , 9788871199337 (256 pages).”

“Deus é o silêncio do universo, e o homem o grito que dá um sentido a esse silêncio. God is the silence of the universe, and man is the cry that gives meaning to that silence. Lanzarote Notebooks (1990), quoted in The Notebook , entry for 9 October 2008.”

“Interview in Idéias , no. 107 (15 October 1988), trans. Margaret Jull Costa .”