Death With Interruptions

by José Saramago

just as too much sugar spoils the palate and harms the digestive process, so our normal and proper respect for patriotic emblems will become a mockery if we allow it to be perverted into this serial affront to modesty,

dying is, after all, the most normal and ordinary thing in life, a purely routine fact, an episode in the endless legacy passed from parents to children, at least since adam and eve,

a cello isn’t like a piano, on the piano, the notes are always in the same places, underneath each key, while on the cello they’re scattered along the length of the strings,

his dog would be running around the city like a mad thing, looking for his master, or else sitting, without eating or drinking, at the entrance to the building, waiting for him to come back.

it isn’t true that the antonym of presumption is humility, even if all the dictionaries in the world swear blind that it is, poor dictionaries, who have to rule themselves and us only with the words that exist, when there are so many words still missing,

the fate of hopes is always to breed more hopes, which is why, despite so many disappointments,

smiles that were nothing but deliberate muscular contractions,