# Quote — José Saramago, The Cave

> He got out of the van to see how many other suppliers were ahead of him and thus calculate, more or less accurately, how long he would have to wait. He was number thirteen, he counted again, no, there was no doubt about it. Although he was not a suspirations person, he knew about that number’s bad reputation, in any conversation about chance, fate or destiny, someone always chips in with some real-life experience of the negative, even fatal influence of the number thirteen. He tried to remember if he had ever been in this place in the queue before, but the long and the short of it was that either it had never happened or else he had simply forgotten. he got annoyed with himself, it was nonsense, utterly absurd to worry about something that has no real existence, yes, that was right, he had never thought of that before, numbers don’t really exist, things couldn’t care less what number we give them, its all the same to them if we say they’re number thirteen or number forty-four, we can conclude, at the very least, that they do not even notice the position they happen to end up in. people aren’t things, people always want to be in first place,

- Author: [José Saramago](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago.md)
- Book: [The Cave](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave.md)
- Page: 9
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago#The_Cave_(2000)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/he-got-out

## More from this book

> The young have the ability, but lack the wisdom, and the old have the wisdom, but lack the ability.

p. 4 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/the-young-have.md)

> 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.

p. 28 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/life-is-like.md)

> Where do begin, he asked, Where you always have to begin, at the beginning,

p. 53 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jose-saramago/the-cave/where-do-begin.md)