The Cave by Jose Saramago

quotes from said novel:

"Life is like that, full of words that are not worth saying or that were worth saying once but not any more, each word that we utter will take up the space of another more deserving word, not deserving in its own right, but because of the possible consequences of saying it." 28

"he spent the whole time sitting on a log in the woodshed, sometimes staring straight ahead with the fixitiy of a blind man who knows that even if he turns his head in the other direction he will still not see anything, at other times studying his open palm, as if looking for a route in those lines and crossroads, either the shortest of the longest, generally speaking, choosing one or the other depends on how much or how little of a rush you are in , not forgetting, of course, those cases when someone or something is pushing you from behind, and you don't know why or where they are pushing you." 30-31