Art & Creativity Quote by Jose Saramago

A lesser writer treats travel as a costume change; Saramago treats it like a tool he’ll only pick up if it cuts. The line has the bracing austerity of someone who knows how easily movement turns into a socially approved way of not working. “Traveling less” isn’t framed as deprivation but as a deliberate trade: attention is finite, and he’s reallocating it toward the page. In an era that increasingly sells experience as identity, Saramago’s stance is almost heretical: the self is not curated through destinations, it’s forged through sustained labor.

The phrase “degree of usefulness” is the giveaway. It’s dry, faintly bureaucratic, and pointedly unromantic. He refuses the sentimental script of travel as enrichment and replaces it with an ethic of purpose. Subtext: the world is loud, invitations are endless, and writers are constantly being recruited into public life - festivals, talks, literary tourism - that flatters the ego while draining the work. By turning destinations into a criterion, he flips the power dynamic. The itinerary serves the novel, not the other way around.

Context matters: Saramago’s fiction is built on moral pressure and social systems, not postcard atmosphere. His travel, when it happens, is research, witness, friction - something that can be transmuted into narrative. The intent is self-discipline, but also a quiet rebuke to a culture that confuses motion with meaning. He’s staking a claim that the writer’s primary obligation is not to be seen, but to produce.