José Saramago
Foundation

«"The wisest man I ever knew could neither read nor write. At four in the morning, when the promise of a new day still lingered in France, he would rise from his pallet and go out into the fields, leading to pasture the half-dozen sows whose fertility he and his wife fed on.
My maternal grandparents lived off this scarcity, raising small pigs that, after weaning, were sold to neighbors in the village of Azinhaga, in the province of Ribatejo. These grandparents were named Jerónimo Melrinho and Josefa Caixinha, and both were illiterate. In winter, when the nighttime cold was so intense that the water in the jugs froze inside the house, they would fetch the weakest piglets from the pigpens and take them to their beds.»

""How the character was the master and the author his apprentice" - Stockholm, December 7, 1998