Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought. – Jose Saramago
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. – Jose Saramago
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. – Jose Saramago
Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation. – Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver, 1930s