A biography for Jorge Amadohasn’t been written yet.
“I am like my characters - sometimes even the female ones.”
“He owned a whole world full of memories, of lovely moments relived and happy recollections. I'm not saying he was happy or that he didn't suffer. He suffered very much, but he did not despair; he still drew nourishment from what he had been given. But the sadness never left him. Happiness needs more than memories of the past to feed on; it also needs dreams of the future.”
“Night was running ahead of itself.”
“I am a writer who has written about the life of my people, the character of my people. What I can say is that the greatest hero of the Brazilian novel is the Brazilian people.”
“Not even God who made us all can kill everybody at once. He kills people one by one, and the more he kills the more people are gonna be born and grow up and go on being born and growing up and mixing, and no son-of-a-bitch is gonna stop 'em!”
“I'm under no illusions about the importance of my work. But if it has any worth, it is that it truly reflects the Brazilian people.”
“Life was good, one had only to live it.”
“Many things I might not write today because I no longer believe them, but I wouldn't change them, since I believed them at the time.”
“The best translations are always the ones in the language the author can't read.”