Mind effed: Jose Saramago karate-chops the 4th wall and drops knowledge about lazy novelists

The journey was uneventful, that’s what novelists in a hurry always say when they think that, in the ten minutes or ten hours they are about to eliminate, nothing has taken place that would warrant any special mention. Strictly speaking, it would be much more correct and honest to put it like this, As in all journeys whatever their duration and length, there have been a thousand incidents, words and thoughts, and for a thousand you could read ten thousand, but the narrative is dragging, so I’m allowing myself to abbreviate, using three lines to cover two hundred kilometers, bearing in mind that the four people inside the car have traveled in silence, with neither thought nor gesture, pretending that by the end of the journey they will have nothing  to relate.

-from The Stone Raft (pg 122)

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninapetita/