“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the...”
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Work
Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices. Marçal works there as a security guard, and Cipriano drives him to work each day before delivering his own humble pots and jugs. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. People prefer plastic, apparently. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, and Cipriano and Marta set to work--until the order is cancelled and the penniless trio must move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their new apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate; what they find transforms the family's life, in a novel that is both "irrepressibly funny" (The Christian Science Monitor) and a "triumph" (The Washington Post Book World).
Quotes
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José Saramago
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“Authoritarian, paralyzing, circular, occasionally elliptical stock phrases, also jocularly referred to as nuggets of wisdom, are a malignant plague, one of the very worst ever to ravage the...”
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“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...”
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“... time is a master of ceremonies who always ends up putting us in our rightful place, we advance, stop, and retreat according to his orders, our mistake lies in imagining that we can catch...”
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“... the best way of killing a rose is to force it open when it is still only the promise of a bud.”
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“... we are only ever pretending to ourselves, never to other people ...”
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