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Life Is Like That, Full Of Words That Are Not Worth Saying Or That Were Worth Saying Once But Not Any More, Each Word That We Utter Will Take Up The Space Of Another More Deserving Word, Not Deserving In Its Own Right, But Because Of The Possible Consequences Of Saying It.
-Jose Saramago
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Life Is Like That,

Jose Saramago
Life Is Like That, Full Of Words That Are Not Worth Saying Or That Were Worth Saying Once But Not Any More, Each Word That We Utter Will Take Up The Space Of Another More Deserving Word, Not Deserving In Its Own Right, But Because Of The Possible Consequences Of Saying It.
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Space
Life Is Like
Deserving
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Beginning With Adolescence, My Political Formation Was Oriented In The Ideological Direction Of Marxism. It Was Natural, Being That My Thinking Was Influenced By An Atmosphere Of Active Critical Resistance. That Was The Way It Was During All Of The Dictatorship And Up To The Revolution Of 1974.
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All Stories Are Like Those About The Creation Of The Universe, No One Was There, No One Witnessed Anything, Yet Everyone Knows What Happened.
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The Day Before Is What We Bring To The Day We're Actually Living Through, Life Is A Matter Of Carrying Along All Those Days-before Just As Someone Might Carry Stones, And When We Can No Longer Cope With The Load, The Work Is Done, The Last Day Is The Only One That Is Not The Day Before Another Day.
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With The Passing Of Time, As Well As The Social Evolution And Genetic Exchange, We Ended Up Putting Our Conscience In The Colour Of Blood And In The Salt Of Tears, And, As If That Were Not Enough, We Made Our Eyes Into A Kind Of Mirror Turned Inwards, With The Result That They Often Show Without Reserve What We Are Verbally Trying To Deny.
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We Live In A Very Peculiar World. Democracy Isn't Discussed, As If It Was Taken For Granted, As If Democracy Had Taken God's Place, Who Is Also Not Discussed.
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But Truths Need To Be Repeated Many Times So That They Don't, Poor Things, Lapse Into Oblivion.
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Jeronimo, My Grandfather, Swine-herder And Story-teller, Feeling Death About To Arrive And Take Him, Went And Said Goodbye To The Trees In The Yard, One By One, Embracing Them And Crying Because He Knew He Wouldn't See Them Again. To Truly Appreciate Life We Must Remember That Nothing Lasts For Ever And Take Nothing We Enjoy For Granted. In So Doing We Stay Grateful And Happy For All Our Good Fortune.
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Every Second That Passes Is Like A Door That Opens To Allow In What Has Not Yet Happened, What We Call The Future, But, To Challenge The Contradictory Nature Of What We Have Just Said, Perhaps It Would Be More Accurate To Say That The Future Is Just An Immense Void, That The Future Is Just The Time On Which The Eternal Present Feeds.
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Can You Imagine What Bush Would Say If Someone Like Hugo Chavez Asked Him For A Little Piece Of Land To Install A Military Base, And He Only Wanted To Plant A Venezuelan Flag There?
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The Attitude Of Insolent Haughtiness Is Characteristic Of The Relationships Americans Form With What Is Alien To Them, With Others.
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In The End We Discover The Only Condition For Living Is To Die.
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...you Have To Leave The Island In Order To See The Island, That We Can't See Ourselves Unless We Become Free Of Ourselves, Unless We Escape From Ourselves You Mean, No, That's Not The Same Thing.
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I Am A Better Novelist Than A Poet, Playwright, Or Essayist.
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...sometimes We Ask Ourselves Why Happiness Took So Long To Arrive, Why It Didn't Come Sooner, But Appears Suddenly, As Now, When We've Given Up Hope Of It Ever Arriving, It's Likely Then That We Won't Know What To Do, And Rather Than It Being A Question Of Choosing Between Laughter And Tears, We Will Be Filled By A Secret Anxiety To Which We Might Not Know How To Respond At All.
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The History Of Mankind Is The History Of Our Misunderstandings With God, For He Doesn't Understand Us, And We Don't Understand Him.
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The Period That I Could Consider The Most Important In My Literary Work Came About Beginning With The Revolution, And In A Certain Way, Developed As A Consequence Of The Revolution. But It Was Also A Result Of The Counterrevolutionary Coup Of November 1975.
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The U.s. Needs To Control The Middle East, The Gateway To Asia. It Already Has Military Installations In Uzbekistan.
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Perhaps It Is The Language That Chooses The Writers It Needs, Making Use Of Them So That Each Might Express A Tiny Part Of What It Is.
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We Never Consider That The Things Dogs Know About Us Are Things Of Which We Have Not The Faintest Notion.
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I Am A Person With Leftist Convictions, And Always Have Been.
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We Know That Happiness Is Short-lived, That We Fail To Cherish It When It Is Within Our Grasp And Value It Only When It Has Vanished Forever.
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Moving
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Firsts
Even Death, Faced With The Option Of Death Or Life, She Would Choose Life.
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It Is Not Pornography That Is Obscene, It Is Hunger That Is Obscene.
Hunger
Pornography
Obscene
That It's Possible Not To See A Lie Even When It's In Front Of Us.
Lying
Fronts
. . . If There Is A Way For The World To Be Transformed For The Better, It Can Only Be Done By Pessimism; Optimists Will Never Change The World For The Better.
Done
World
Way
A Man Was On His Way To The Gallows When He Met Another, Who Asked Him: Where Are You Going, My Friend? And The Condemned Man Replied: I'm Not Going Anywhere. They're Taking Me By Force.
Men
Way
Mets
A Woman Is Essentially A Vessel Made To Be Filled.
Women
Made
Filled
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Fate
Hands
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Some People Spend Their Entire Lives Reading But Never Get Beyond Reading The Words On The Page, They Don't Understand That The Words Are Merely Stepping Stones Placed Across A Fast-flowing River, And The Reason They're There Is So That We Can Reach The Farther Shore, It's The Other Side That Matters...
Inspirational
Life
Reading
Today's Bread Does Not Eliminate Yesterday's Hunger, Much Less That Of Tomorrow.
Yesterday
Doe
Today
There Are Such Moments In Life, When, In Order For Heaven To Open, It Is Necessary For A Door To Close.
Doors
Order
Choices
The Worst Pain ... Isn't The Pain You Feel At The Time, It's The Pain You Feel Later On When There's Nothing You Can Do About It, They Say That Time Heals All Wounds, But We Never Live Long Enough To Test That Theory.
Pain
Long
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Death Has No Need To Be Cruel, Taking People's Lives Is More Than Enough.
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Blindness Is A Private Matter Between A Person And The Eyes With Which He Or She Was Born.
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Matter
Born
Forgive Me If What Has Seemed Little To You, To Me Is All.
Forgive Me
Forgiving
Littles
Words Have Their Own Hierarchy, Their Own Protocol, Their Own Artistic Titles, Their Own Plebeian Stigmas.
Hierarchy
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Artistic
The Possibility Of The Impossible, Dreams And Illusions, Are The Subject Of My Novels.
Dream
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Illusion
Your Questions Are False If You Already Know The Answer.
Answers
Knows
Ifs
Strictly Speaking, We Do Not Make Decisions. Decisions Make Us.
Decision
We Use Words To Understand Each Other And Even, Sometimes, To Find Each Other.
Use
Sometimes
The Sun Appears In One Of The Upper Corners Of The Rectangle, On The Left Of Anyone Looking At The Picture.
Sun
Rectangles
Corners
I Consider Books To Be Good For Our Health, And Also Our Spirits, And They Help Us To Become Poets Or Scientists, To Understand The Stars Or Else To Discover Them Deep Within The Aspirations Of Certain Characters, Those Who Sometimes, On Certain Evenings, Escape From The Pages And Walk Among Us Humans, Perhaps The Most Human Of Us All.
Stars
Book
Character
I Am The Same Person I Was Before Receiving The Nobel Prize. I Work With The Same Regularity, I Have Not Modified My Habits, I Have The Same Friends.
Gmos
Receiving
Habit
Chaos Is Order Yet Undeciphered.
Order
Chaos
Each Part In Itself Constitutes The Whole To Which It Belongs.
Whole
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.
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Letters
World
Consciences Keep Silence More Often Than They Should, That's Why Laws Were Created.
Law
Silence
Should
You Know The Name You Were Given, You Do Not Know The Name That You Have
Names
Given
Knows
Without The Faintest Possibility Of Finding A Job, I Decided To Devote Myself To Literature: It Was About Time To Find Out What I Was Worth As A Writer.
Jobs
Literature
Possibility
I Believe That I've Been Asked All Possible Questions. I, Myself, If I Were A Journalist, Would Not Know What To Ask Me.
Believe
Ask Me
Journalist
A Human Being Is A Being Who Is Constantly 'under Construction,' But Also, In A Parallel Fashion, Always In A State Of Constant Destruction.
Fashion
Construction
Destruction
The Wisest Man I Ever Knew In My Whole Life Could Not Read Or Write.
Writing
Men
Wisest Man
The Painter Paints, The Musician Makes Music, The Novelist Writes Novels. But I Believe That We All Have Some Influence, Not Because Of The Fact That One Is An Artist, But Because We Are Citizens.
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Writing
Artist
I Was A Good Pupil At Primary School: In The Second Class I Was Writing With No Spelling Mistakes, And The Third And Fourth Classes Were Done In A Single Year.
Mistake
School
Writing
Blind People Do Not Need A Name, I Am My Voice, Nothing Else Matters.
Names
Voice
People
When You Are Old And Realize That Time Is Running Out, You Start Imagining That You Have The Cure For All The Ills Of The World In Your Hand, And Get Frustrated Because No One Pays You Any Attention.
Running
Hands
Frustrated
The Problem Is That The Right Doesn't Need Any Ideas To Govern, But The Left Can't Govern Without Ideas.
Ideas
Needs
Problem
People Live With The Illusion That We Have A Democratic System, But It's Only The Outward Form Of One. In Reality We Live In A Plutocracy, A Government Of The Rich.
Reality
Government
Hymns
There Are Times When It Is Best To Be Content With What One Has, So As Not To Lose Everything.
Contentment
Loses
The Wise Man Contents Himself With What He Has, Until Such Time As He Invents Something Better.
Wise
Men
Contentment
Unlike Joseph Her Husband, Mary Is Neither Upright Nor Pious, But She Is Not Blame For This, The Blame Lies With The Language She Speaks If Not With The Men Who Invented It, Because That Language Has No Feminine Form For The Words Upright And Pious.
Husband
Lying
Men
Every Novel Is Like This, Desperation, A Frustrated Attempt To Save Something Of The Past. Except That It Still Has Not Been Established Whether It Is The Novel That Prevents Man From Forgetting Himself Or The Impossibility Of Forgetfulness That Makes Him Write Novels.
Writing
Past
Men
I'm Not Pessimistic. It Is The World That Is Terrible. How Can We Be Optimistic In The Face Of A Planet Where People Live So Badly, Nature Is Being Destroyed And The Dominant Empire Is Money?
Optimistic
People
Empires
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.
Travel
Writing
Order
Death Is The Inventor Of God.
Inventor
I Can't Imagine Myself Outside Any Kind Of Social Or Political Involvement.
Political
Kind
Imagine
Writer's Make National Literature, While Translators Make Universal Literature.
Literature
Translators
Universal
Dignity Has No Price ... When Someone Starts Making Small Concessions, In The End Life Loses All Meaning.
Dignity
Ends
Concessions
A Stomach Accustomed To Hunger Is Satisfied With Very Little.
Littles
Hunger
Stomach
The Novel Is Not So Much A Literary Genre, But A Literary Space, Like A Sea That Is Filled By Many Rivers.
Space
Genre Is
Literary Genre
Oh, I'm Not Just Going Too Far, I've Arrived.
Doubt Is The Privilege Of Those Who Have Lived A Long Time
Long
Doubt
Privilege
The Much-quoted Immaculate Conception Of The Virgin Mary Occurred But Once So That The World Might Know That Almighty God, When He So Chooses, Has No Need Of Men, Though He Cannot Dispense With Women.
Women
Needs
World
What Kind Of World Is This That Can Send Machines To Mars And Does Nothing To Stop The Killing Of A Human Being?
Doe
Machines
Mars
The World Had Already Changed Before September 11. The World Has Been Going Through A Process Of Change Over The Last 20 Or 30 Years. A Civilization Ends, Another One Begins.
Years
Civilization
September 11
Doesn't Anybody Understand That Killing In The Name Of God Only Makes Him A Murderer?
Names
Killing
Murderer
There Are Those Who Deny Me The Right To Speak Of God, Because I Am Not A Believer. And I Say That I Have Every Right In The World. I Want To Talk About God Because It Is A Problem That Affects All Humanity.
Humanity
Want
World
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.'
Dream
Book
Men
Human Vocabulary Is Still Not Capable, And Probably Never Will Be, Of Knowing, Recognizing, And Communicating Everything That Can Be Humanly Experienced And Felt.
Vocabulary
Knowing
Communicate
We Are Finally Living In Plato's Cave, If We Consider How Those Who Were Imprisoned Within The Cave - Who Could Do Nothing But Watch Those Shadows Passing On The Back Wall - Were Convinced That Those Shadows Were Their One And Only Reality. I See A Profound Similarity To All This In The Epoch We're Now Living In. We No Longer Live Simply Through Images: We Live Through Images That Don't Even Exist, Which Are The Result Not Of Physical Projection But Of Pure Virtuality.
Wall
Plato
Reality
Will We Ever Learn That Certain Things Can Be Understood Only If We Take The Trouble To Trace Them To Their Origins.
Trouble
Certain
Understood
It Takes Little Or Nothing To Undo Reputations, The Merest Trifle Makes And Remakes Them, It Is Simply A Question Of Finding The Best Means Of Engaging The Confidence Or Interest Of Those Who Are To Become One's Unsuspecting Echoes Or Accomplices.
Mean
Echoes
Littles
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.
Writing
Feet
Able
I Don't Think It Is Worth Explaining How A Character's Nose Or Chin Looks. It Is My Feeling That Readers Will Prefer To Construct, Little By Little, Their Own Character—the Author Will Do Well To Entrust The Reader With This Part Of The Work.
Character
Thinking
Feelings
Don't Be Afraid, The Darkness You're In Is No Greater Than The Darkness Inside Your Own Body, They Are Two Darknesses Separated By A Skin, I Bet You've Never Thought Of That, You Carry A Darkness About With You All The Time And That Doesn't Frighten You...my Dear Chap, You Have To Learn To Live With The Darkness Outside Just As You Learned To Live With The Darkness Inside
Two
Darkness
Skins
I Do Not Just Write, I Write What I Am. If There Is A Secret, Perhaps That Is It.
Writing
Secret
Ifs
Perfect Moments, Especially When They Verge On The Sublime Have The Grave Disadvantage Of Being Very Short Lived, Which In Fact, Being Obvious, We Would Not Need To Mention Were It Not That They Have A Still Greater Disadvantage, Which Is That We Do Not Know What To Do Once They Are Over.
Perfect
Sublime
Needs
We Would Understand Much More About Life’s Complexities If We Applied Ourselves To An Assiduous Study Of Its Contradictions, Instead Of Wasting Time On Identities And Coherences, Seeing As These Have A Duty To Provide Their Own Explanations.
Identity
Coherence
Wasting Time
We Can Escape From Everything, But Not From Ourselves.
That Is The Dream Of All Novelists-that One Of Their Characters Will Become 'somebody.'
Dream
Character
Novelists
Men Are Angels Born Without Wings, Nothing Could Be Nicer Than To Be Born Without Wings And To Make Them Grow.
Angel
Men
Wings
Globalization Is A Form Of Totalitarianism... It Is The Rich Who Rule, And The Poor Live As They Can.
Rich
Poor
Globalization
Each Day Is A Little Bit Of History
Each Day
Littles
Bits
Americans Have Discovered Fear.
With The Passage Of Time, As Well As The Social Evolution And Genetic Exchange, We Ended Up Putting Our Conscience In The Color Of Our Blood And The Salt Of Our Tears.
Blood
Color
Tears
If I'm Sincere Today, What Does It Matter If I Regret It Tomorrow?
Regret
Today
Does It Matter
Blessed Be The Night, Which Conceals And Protects Things Fair And Foul With The Same Indifferent Mantle.
Blessed
Night
Foul
Not Only Does The Universe Have Its Own Laws, All Of Them Indifferent To The Contradictory Dreams And Desires Of Humanity, And In The Formulation Of Which We Contribute Not One Iota, Apart, That Is, From The Words By Which We Clumsily Name Them, But Everything Seems To Indicate That It Uses These Laws For Aims And Objectives That Transcend And Always Will Transcend Our Understanding.
Dream
Law
Names
Words Were Not Given To Man In Order To Conceal His Thoughts.
Men
Order
Given
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.
Hymns
Political
Moments
One Cannot Be Too Careful With Words, They Change Their Minds Just As People Do.
People
Mind
Careful
Perhaps Only In A World Of The Blind Will Things Be What They Truly Are.
World
Blind
Blindness
In A King, Modesty Would Be A Sign Of Weakness.
Kings
Weakness
Would Be
The Best Way To Killing A Rose Is To Force It Open When It Is Still Only The Promise Of A Bud.
Rose
Promise
Bud
Earthenware Is Like People, It Needs To Be Well Treated.
People
Needs
Wells
Words That Come From The Heart Are Never Spoken, They Get Caught In The Throat And Can Only Be Read In Ones's Eyes.
Heart
Eye
Caught
In Matters Of Feeling And Of The Heart, Too Much Is Always Better Than Too Little.
Heart
Feelings
Matter
Life Is Like That, Full Of Words That Are Not Worth Saying Or That Were Worth Saying Once But Not Any More, Each Word That We Utter Will Take Up The Space Of Another More Deserving Word, Not Deserving In Its Own Right, But Because Of The Possible Consequences Of Saying It.
Space
Life Is Like
Deserving
Very Few People Are Aware That In Each Of Our Fingers, Located Somewhere Between The Firs Phalange, The Mesophalange And The Metaphalange, There Is A Tiny Brain... It Should Be Noted That Fingers Are Without Brains, These Develop Gradually With The Passage Of Time And With The Help Of What The Eyes See... That Is Why The Fingers Have Always Excelled At Uncovering What Is Concealed.
Eye
People
Brain
I Can't Imagine Myself Outside Any Kind Of Social Or Political Involvement. Yes, I'm A Writer, But I Live In This World, And My Writing Doesn't Exist On A Separate Level. And If People Know Who I Am And Read My Books, Well, Good; That Way, If I Have Something More To Say, Then Everyone Benefits.
Book
Writing
Who I Am
We Are So Afraid Of The Idea Of Having To Die... That We Always Try To Find Excuses For The Dead, As If We Were Asking Beforehand To Be Excused When It Is Our Turn.
Ideas
Trying
Asking
Often When You Ask For One Thing You Receive Another, This Is The Mysterious Thing About Prayer, We Address Them To Heaven With Some Private Intention, But They Choose Their Own Path, Sometimes They Delay, Allowing Other Prayers To Overtake Them, Frequently They Overlap And Become Hybrid Prayers Of Dubious Origin, Which Quarrel And Argue Among Themselves.
Prayer
Mysterious Things
Heaven
Look What Happened With The Employment Law In France-the Law Was Withdrawn Because The People Marched In The Streets. I Think What We Need Is A Global Protest Movement Of People Who Won't Give Up.
Giving Up
Thinking
Law
As So Often Happens, The Thing Left Undone Tires You Most Of All, You Only Feel Rested When It Has Been Accomplished.
Tire
Undone
Accomplished
Liking Is Probably The Best Form Of Ownership, And Ownership The Worst Form Of Liking.
Liking Someone
Ownership
Form
There Is Relationship Between Sight And Touch, Something About Eyes Being Able To See Through The Fingers Touching The Clay, About Fingers Being Able To Feel What The Eyes Are Seeing Without The Fingers Actually Touching It.
Eye
Sight
Touching
A Journey Never Ends. Only The Travellers End.
Death
Journey
Ends
As Citizens, We All Have An Obligation To Intervene And Become Involved - It's The Citizen Who Changes Things.
House
Citizens
Obligation
Every Thing In Life Is A Uniform; The Only Time Our Bodies Are Truly In Civilian Dress Is When We're Naked.
Things In Life
Dresses
Naked
Ah, In Every Age There Is Always Some New Wonder To Astound Mankind Until They Grow Accustomed To It And Lose Interest.
Age
Wonder
Mankind
Things Will Be Very Bad For Latin America. You Only Have To Consider The Ambitions And The Doctrines Of The Empire, Which Regards This Region As Its Backyard.
Latin
Ambition
America
When We Are Born, When We Enter This World, It Is As If We Signed A Pact For The Rest Of Our Life, But A Day May Come When We Will Ask Ourselves Who Signed This On My Behalf?
World
May
Born
Whether We Like It Or Not, The One Justification For The Existence Of All Religions Is Death, They Need Death As Much As We Need Bread To Eat.
Needs
Bread
Existence
The Virtue Of Maps, They Show What Can Be Done With Limited Space, They Foresee That Everything Can Happen Therein.
Space
Done
Maps
From Literature To Ecology, From The Escape Velocity Of Galaxies To The Greenhouse Effect, From Garbage Disposal Methods To Traffic Jams, Everything Is Discussed In Our World. But The Democratic System, As If It Were A Given Fact, Untouchable By Nature Until The End Of Time, We Don't Discuss That.
Garbage Disposal
Our World
Jam
There Is Nothing Healthier For A Man Than To Walk On His Own Two Legs.
Men
Two
Legs
For Human Words Are Like Shadows, And Shadows Are Incapable Of Explaining Light And Between Shadow And Light There Is The Opaque Body From Which Words Are Born.
Light
Shadow
Body
We Say Fine, Even Though We May Be Dying, And This Is Commonly Known As Taking One's Courage In Both Hands, A Phenomenon That Has Only Been Observed In The Human Species.
Hands
Dying
May
Some Drivers Have Already Got Out Of Their Cars, Prepared To Push The Stranded Vehicle To A Spot Where It Will Not Hold Up The Traffic, They Beat Furiously On The Closed Windows, The Man Inside Turns His Head In Their Direction, First To One Side Then To The Other, He Is Clearly Shouting Something, To Judge By The Movements Of His Mouth He Appears To Be Repeating Some Words, No One Word But Three, As Turns Out To Be The Case When Someone Finally Manages To Open The Door, I Am Blind.
Men
Doors
Judging
Words Are Like That, They Deceive, They Pile Up, It Seems They Do Not Know Where To Go, And, Suddenly, Because Of Two Or Three Or Four That Suddenly Come Out, Simple In Themselves, A Personal Pronoun, An Adverb, An Adjective, We Have The Excitement Of Seeing Them Coming Irresistibly To The Surface Through The Skin And The Eyes And Upsetting The Composure Of Our Feelings, Sometimes The Nerves That Can Not Bear It Any Longer, They Put Up With A Great Deal, They Put Up With Everything, It Was As If They Were Wearing Armor, We Might Say.
Eye
Simple
Two
One Can Show No Greater Respect Than To Weep For A Stranger.
Stranger
Shows
Greater
It Is Difficult To Understand These People Who Democratically Take Part In Elections And A Referendum, But Are Then Incapable Of Democratically Accepting The Will Of The People.
People
Election
Accepting
If We Cannot Live Entirely Like Human Beings, At Least Let Us Do Everything In Our Power Not To Live Entirely Like Animals.
Animal
Humans
Ifs
No, There Are Three People In A Marriage, There's The Woman, There's The Man, And There's What I Call The Third Person, The Most Important, The Person Who Is Composed Of The Man And Woman Together.
Marriage
Men
People
It Is Strange How The Elderly Fall Silent When They Ought To Go On Speaking, Obliging The Young To Learn Everything From Scratch.
Fall
Elderly
Scratches
As My Cat Would Say, All Hours Are Good For Sleeping.
Sleep
Cat
Hours
The Difficult Thing Isn't Living With Other People, It's Understanding Them.
People
Understanding
Difficult
In Effect I Am Not A Novelist, But Rather A Failed Essayist Who Started To Write Novels Because He Didn't Know How To Write Essays.
Writing
Novelists
Essays
If I Could Repeat My Childhood, I Would Repeat It Exactly As It Was, With The Poverty, The Cold, Little Food, With The Flies And Pigs, All That.
Pigs
Childhood
Littles
God, The Devil, Good, Evil, It's All In Our Heads, Not In Heaven Or Hell, Which We Also Invented. We Do Not Realize That, Having Invented God, We Immediately Became His Slaves.
Evil
Heaven
Islam
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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