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.
Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are.
It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power.
A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction.
As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.
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.
What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being?
The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO.
I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see.
The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write.
The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas.
Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity.
Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt.
I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon.
I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist.
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.
The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers.
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.
There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is.
I am not a prophet.
