Death With Interruptions

by José Saramago

Then it really could be said that they went out for wool and came home shorn.

One cannot be too careful with words, they change their

minds just as people do.

I knew that before you were born, said the spirit hovering over the waters of the aquarium, the silkworm didn’t die, there was no corpse inside the cocoon when the moth had left, but, as you said, one was born out of the death of the other, It’s called metamorphosis,

it seems you don’t understand that words are the labels we stick on things, not the things themselves, you’ll never know what the things are really like, nor even what their real names are, because the names you gave them are just that, the names you gave them,

was death one or several, should we be referring to death in the singular or death in the plural, and now that I have my pen in my hand, I would just like to say that the church, in adopting such an ambiguous stance,

Everything that can happen will happen, it’s only a matter of time, and if we don’t get to see it while we’re around, it will be because we didn’t live long enough.

one day you will find out about Death with a capital D, and at that moment, in the unlikely event that she gives you time to do so, you will understand the real difference between the relative and the absolute, between full and empty, between still alive and no longer alive,