Life & Wisdom Quote by Jose Saramago

A line like this reads less like a confession than a refusal: Saramago declining to let biography, prizes, or the polite consensus of “great literature” sand down his politics. “Convictions” is the operative word. It suggests something sturdier than mood or fashion, a moral architecture he’s lived inside for decades. Then he adds the quiet provocation: “and always have been.” That’s not just continuity; it’s a rebuke to the expectation that artists mature into centrism, that seriousness equals moderation, that age is a solvent for radical commitments.

The intent is clarifying and preemptive. Saramago is staking out the ground before critics can frame his work as merely allegorical or “humanist” in the vaguest sense. His novels are packed with parables about institutions failing, power laundering itself through bureaucracy, and ordinary people forced into ethical choices under pressure. To say he’s always been leftist is to insist those aren’t abstract thought experiments; they’re extensions of a worldview shaped by inequality and authority.

The subtext also carries a distinctly European, post-dictatorship charge. Coming from a Portuguese writer who lived through Salazar’s Estado Novo and later became a Nobel laureate, the sentence signals that success didn’t purchase compliance. It’s an assertion of integrity, but also a challenge: if you want the art, don’t pretend the politics are an unfortunate accessory. For Saramago, the politics are part of the engine that makes the sentences move.