Quotes from Clarice Lispector

My world today is raw, it is a world of great vital difficulty. Because, more than a star, today I want the thick and black root of the stars, I want the source that always seems dirty, and is dirty, and that is always incomprehensible. It is with pain that I bid farewell even to the beauty of a child - I want the adult who is more primitive and ugly and drier and more difficult, and who became a child-seed that cannot be broken between the teeth.

Mi dedico alla nostalgia della mia antica povertà, quando tutto era più sobrio e più degno, e io non avevo ancora mangiato aragoste.

She had what's known as inner life and didn't know it. She lived off herself as if eating her own entrails. When she went to work she looked like a gentle lunatic because as the bus went along she daydreamed in loud and dazzling dreams.

La persona della quale parlerò e così sciocca che, a volte, per strada, sorridere gli altri. Nessuno le ricambia il sorriso neppure la vedono.

All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don't know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.

Ouve, por eu ter mergulhado no abismo é que estou começando a amar o abismo de que sou feita.

Quis o mar e sentiu os lençóis da cama.

Queria tanto morrer de saúde. Como quem explode. Éclate é melhor: j'éclate.

Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me?

Everything struck her at times as too precious, impossible to touch. And, at times, what people used as air to breathe, was weight and death for her.

Nada existe de mais difícil do que entregar-se ao instante. Esta dificuldade é dor humana.

Quando rezava conseguia um oco de alma - e esse oco é o tudo que posso eu jamais ter. Mais do que isso, nada. Mas o vazio tem valor e a semelhança do pleno. Um meio de obter é não procurar, um meio de ter é o de não pedir e somente acreditar que o silêncio que eu creio em mim é resposta e meu - a meu mistério.

Por que é que você me pede tanta aspirina? Não estou reclamando, embora isso custe dinheiro. - É para eu não me doer. - Como é que é? Hein? Você se dói? - Eu me doo o tempo todo. - Aonde? - Dentro, não sei explicar.

Qué soy? Soy: estar de pie ante un espanto. Soy: lo que he visto. No entiendo y temo entender, la materia del mundo me espanta, con sus planetas y sus cucarachas

Forgive me but I'm going to keep talking about me who am unknown to myself, and as I write I'm a bit surprised because I discover I have a destiny. Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

I'm going to start my exercise in courage, living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage.

No one can enter another's heart.

She had pacified life so well, taken such care for it not to explode. She had kept it all in serene comprehension, separated each person from the rest, clothes were clearly made to be worn and you could choose the evening movie from the newspaper—everything wrought in such a way that one day followed another.

In the sky, through the window, white clouds were coming undone, running loose from the calm blue.

But now I want to say things that comfort me and that are a little free. For example: Thursdat is a day transparent as an insect's wing in the light. Just as Monday is a compact day. Ultimately, far beyond thought, I live from these ideas, if ideas is what they are. They are sensations that transform into ideas because I must use words. Even just using them mentally. The primary thought thinks with words.

Hers is an art that makes us want to know the woman; she is a woman who makes us want to know her art.

Qué fiebre, no consigo parar de vivir. En esta densa selva de palabras que he envuelto frondosamente lo que siento y pienso y vivo y que transforma todo lo que soy en algo mío que sin embargo está completamente fuera de mí.

Do not read what I write as a reader would do. Unless this reader works, he too, in the soliloquies of the irrational dark.

Is woede mijn diepste verzet tegen het mens-zijn? Mens-zijn mat me af. En ik ben woedend om het voelen van zoveel liefde. Soms leef ik van de woede tegen het leven. Want de woede wekt me tot leven: ik heb me nooit zo waakzaam gevoeld. Ik weet best dat dit overgaat en dat het noodzakelijke ontberen terugkeert.