Jose Saramago Quotes
Will we ever learn that certain things can be understood only if we take the trouble to trace them to their origins.
Saramago, José. The Cave. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Harcourt, 2002.
He was discussing his unprecedented steps that as Federal Reserve Chairman he took to cope with the Great Recession after the Meltdown of 2008. He had, as a graduate doctoral student, studied the economic history of the Great Depression of 1929 and the government attempts to ameliorate some of the effects. He was one of the few people in government who had this historical perspective.
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE, was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant." Bloom and Saramago met when Saramago presented Bloom with an honorary degree from the University of Coimbra; according to Bloom: "A warm acquaintanceship ensued, marked by an exegetical disagreement concerning The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, which continued in correspondence and at a later meeting in New York City".