“Cuidado, caín, hablas demasiado, el señor está oyéndote y tarde o temp...” — José Saramago Quote

“Cuidado, caín, hablas demasiado, el señor está oyéndote y tarde o temprano te castigará,”

“À igreja nunca se lhe pediu que explicasse fosse o que fosse, a nossa outra especialidade, além da balística, tem sido neutralizar, pela fé, o espírito curioso.”

“There are people like Senhor José everywhere, who fill their time, or what they believe to be their spare time, by collecting stamps, coins, medals, vases, postcards, matchboxes, books, clocks, sport shirts, autographs, stones, clay figurines, empty beverage cans, little angels, cacti, opera programmes, lighters, pens, owls, music boxes, bottles, bonsai trees, paintings, mugs, pipes, glass obelisks, ceramic ducks, old toys, carnival masks, and they probably do so out of something that we might call metaphysical angst, perhaps because they cannot bear the idea of chaos being the one ruler of the universe, which is why, using their limited powers and with no divine help, they attempt to impose some order on the world, and for a short while they manage it, but only as long as they are there to defend their collection, because when the day comes when it must be dispersed, and that day always comes, either with their death or when the collector grows weary, everything goes back to its beginnings, everything returns to chaos.”

“At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before.”

“Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.”

“And the voice of God was in the whirlwind after all, said Thor”

“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.”

“Islam is not man's ultimate justification to do as he pleases--it is, instead, a religion built on reason and evidence. If each of us asks the ustaz for the causes of his religious opinions, then we should, by doing so, help realise the principles of Islam and thus improve intellectual discussion in our own community.”

“In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.”

“I have always considered myself to be spiritual in a way that has less to do with religion and more with an awareness that you have, and the consciousness you have of being alive and the consciousness that you will be dead.”