When All Is Said And Done, What

Jeronimo, My Grandfather, Swine-herder And Story-teller, Feeling Death About To Arrive And Take Him, Went And Said Goodbye To The Trees In The Yard, One By One, Embracing Them And Crying Because He Knew He Wouldn't See Them Again. To Truly Appreciate Life We Must Remember That Nothing Lasts For Ever And Take Nothing We Enjoy For Granted. In So Doing We Stay Grateful And Happy For All Our Good Fortune.

Perhaps Only In A World Of The Blind Will Things Be What They Truly Are.

But It Is Also True, If This Brings Her Any Consolation, That If, Before Every Action, We Were To Begin Weighing Up The Consequences, Thinking About Them In Earnest, First The Immediate Consequences, Then The Probably, Then The Possible, Then The Imaginable Ones, We Should Never Move Beyond The Point Where Our First Thought Brought Us To A Halt.

A Writer Is A Man Like Any Other: He Dreams. And My Dream Was To Be Able To Say Of This Book, When I Finished: 'this Is A Book About Alentejo.'

I Was A Good Pupil At Primary School: In The Second Class I Was Writing With No Spelling Mistakes, And The Third And Fourth Classes Were Done In A Single Year.