Quotes from Clarice Lispector

If she was no longer herself that meant a loss that counted as a gain.

No fundo ela não passara de uma caixinha de música meio desafinada.

I am blinded. I open my eyes wide and only see. But the secret - that I neither see nor feel. Could I be making here a true orgy of what's behind thought?

She herself asked for nothing, but her sex made its demands like a sunflower germinating in a tomb.

I carry out sun rituals on the slopes of high mountains. But I am also taboo for myself, untouchable because forbidden.

Her brown eyes were untranslatable…She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.

There is something here that frightens me. When I figure out what it is that frightens me, I shall also know what I love here. Fear has always guided me toward what I desire. And because I desire, I fear. Often it was fear that took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love is risky.

Mis desequilibradas palabras son el lujo de mi silencio.

But she didn't fear the moon because she was more lunar than solar and could see with wide-open eyes in the dark dawns the sinister moon in the sky. So she bathed all over in the lunar rays, as there are others who sunbathed. And was becoming profoundly limpid.

I'm stalling. I know that everything I say is just to put it off-to put off the moment when I'll have to start talking, knowing that there is nothing more for me to say. I'm putting off my silence. Have I been putting off silence for my whole life? but now, in my disparagement of the word, perhaps I'll finally be able to start talking." (14)

Pensar es un acto. Sentir es un hecho. Los dos juntos son yo que escribo lo que estoy escribiendo. Dios es el mundo. La verdad es siempre un contacto interior e inexplicable.

At half past three in the morning I woke up. And immediately elastic I jumped out of bed. I came to write you. I mean: be. Now it's half past five. I want nothing: I am pure. I don't wish this solitude on you. But I myself am in the creating fog. Lucid darkness, luminous stupidity.

Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking.

Porque há o direito ao grito. Então eu grito.

I'm blinder than before. I did see, I really did. I was terrified by the raw truth of a world whose greatest horror is that it is so alive that for me to admit that I am as alive as it is - and my most hideous discovery is that I am as alive as it is - I shall have to raise my consciousness of life outside to so high a point that it would amount to a crime against my personal life.

En este instante-ya estoy envuelta en un vago deseo difuso de maravilla y en millares de reflejos de sol en el agua que brota de la fuente de un jardín maduro de perfumes, jardín y sombras que invento ya y ahora y que son el medio concreto de hablar en este mi instante de vida. Mi estado es el de jardín con agua que fluye.

Mas lembrar-se com saudade é como se despedir de novo.

But after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more difficult in this world than to surrender completely. This is one of man's greatest sorrows.

This text that I give you is not to be seen close up: it gains its secret previously invisible roundness when seen from a high-flying plane. Then you can divine the play of islands and see the channels and seas. Understand me: I write you an onomatopoeia, convulsion of language. I'm not transmitting to you a story but just words that live from sound. I speak to you thus: "Lustful trunk.

Every thing has an instant in which it is. I want to grab hold of the is of the thing. These instants passing through the air I breathe: in fireworks they explode silently in space.

Now I know: I'm alone. I and my freedom that I don't know how to use. Great responsibility of solitude. Whoever isn't lost doesn't know freedom and love it. As for me, I own up to my solitude that sometimes falls into ecstasy as before fireworks. I am alone and must live a certain intimate glory that in solitude can become pain. And the pain, silence. I keep its name secret. I need secrets in order to live.

Sim, minha força está na solidão. Não tenho medo nem de chuvas tempestivas nem das grandes ventanias soltas, pois eu também sou o escuro da noite. Embora não aguente bem ouvir um assovio no escuro, e passos.

I've always liked putting things in their places. I think it's my only true calling. By ordering things I create and understand at the same time ... Ordering is finding the best form.

Since life's like that: you press a button and life lights up.