Quotes from Clarice Lispector

Así como nadie le enseñaría un día a morir: seguramente un día moriría como si antes se hubiese estudiado de memoria la representación del papel de una estrella. Pues en la hora de la muerte las personas se vuelven brillantes estrellas de cine, es el instante de gloria de cada uno y es como cuando en el canto coral se oyen agudos silbantes.

Living leaves me atremble.

At this moment" is a rare thing because only sometimes do I step with both feet on the land of the present; usually one foot slides toward the past, the other slides toward the future. And I end up with nothing.

What an effort I make to be myself. I struggle against a tide in a boat with just enough room for my two feet in a perilous and fragile balance.

Sin embargo, a veces adivinaba. Eran manchas cósmicas que sustituían al entender.

A galinha funciona como uma metáfora do artista: um ser imperfeito que produz uma obra superior a ele próprio, enquanto a magia da criação artística é vista como destino de vida e, sobretudo, como uma forma de transcendência e de via de escape da banalidade e da mediocridade.

Living is like being tired and not being able to sleep.

Quem se recusa à visão de um bicho está com medo de si próprio.

Não ter nascido bicho parece ser uma de minhas secretas nostalgias.

Inside her it was as if death didn't exist, as if love could weld her, as if eternity were renewal.

Lo único que estropea la felicidad es el miedo

At the bottom of everything there is the hallelujah.

he thinks that flowers are hauntingly delicate like a sigh of nobody in the dark.

Ah how much easier to to bear and understand pain than that promise of spring's frigid and liquid joy. And with such modesty she was awaiting it: the poignancy of goodness.

Should I say that she was crazy about soldiers? Well she was. Whenever she saw one, she thought with a shiver of pleasure: is he going to kill me?

Yet around her things were living so violently sometimes. The sun was fire, the earth solid and possible, plants were sprouting alive, trembling, whimsical, houses were made so that in them bodies could be sheltered, arms would wrap around waists, for every being and for every thing there was another being and another thing in a union that was a burning end with nothing beyond.

And so I realise that I want for myself the vibrant substratum of the word repeated in a Gregorian chant. I'm aware that everything I know I cannot say, I know only by paining or pronouncing syllables blind of meaning. And if here I have to use words for you, they must create an almost exclusively bodily meaning. I'm battling with the ultimate vibration. To tell you my substratum I make a sentence of words composed only of the now-instants.

And - and don't forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen but it nonetheless known. I know about lots of things I've never seen. And so do you. You can't show proof of the truest thing of all, all you can do is believe. Weep and believe.

Look, haven't you noticed, none of your questions have answers?

It was darker, all she could see of him was a shadow. He was fading more and more, slipping through her hands, dead at the bottom of sleep.

Being happy is for what?

That night I'd already had quite a bit to drink. I wandered from bar to bar, until, excessively happy, I was afraid I'd outdo myself: I'd grown too comfortable in my own skin. I was looking for a way to pour some of myself out, before I completely overflowed

Though I sometimes scream: I no longer want to be I! but I stick to myself and inextricably there forms a tessitura of life.

But I've never known what to do with people and the things I like, sometimes they weigh me down, ever since I was a girl.