Quotes from Clarice Lispector

I realize now that it was a certain apathy, rather than peace, that turned my acts and my desires to ash.

This book is like any other book. But I would be happy if it were only read by people whose souls are already formed. Those who know that the approach, of whatever it may be, happens gradually and painstakingly — even passing through the opposite of what it approaches. They who, only they, will slowly come to understand that this book takes nothing from no one. To me, for example, the character G. H. gave bit by bit a difficult joy; but it is called joy. C.

Though everything is so fragile. I feel so lost. I live off a secret that glows in luminous rays that would darken me if I didn't cover them with a heavy cloak of false certainties. May the God help me: I am without a guide and it is dark once again.

Upon the rubble horses would reappear announcing the rebirth of the old reality, their backs without riders. Because thus it had always been. Until a few men would tie them to wagons, once again erecting a city that they wouldn't understand, once again building, with innocent skill, the things. And then once more they'd need a pointing finger to give them their old names.

Twelve years weigh on a person like pounds of lead. The days melt into one another, merge to form one whole block, a big anchor. And the person is lost.

The last time I came down from the enchanted saddle, my human sadness was so great that I swore never to again. The ride, however, continues on in me. I converse, I clean the house, I smile, but I know that the ride is within me.

Flores envenenadas na jarra. Roxas azuis, encarnadas, atapetam o ar. Que riqueza de hospital. Nunca vi mais belas e mais perigosas. É assim então o teu segredo. Teu segredo é tão parecido contigo que nada me revela além do que já sei. E sei tão pouco como se o teu enigma fosse eu. Assim como tu és o meu.

I am at this instant in a white void awaiting the next instant. Measuring time is just a working hypothesis. But whatever exists is perishable and this forces us to measure immutable and permanent time. It never began and never will end. Never.

It isn't for us that cows' milk comes forth, but we drink it. Flowers weren't made for us to look at or for us to smell, and we look at them and smell them. The Milky Way doesn't exist for us to know if its existence, but we know.

Around the shadow is a heat of abundant sweat. I'm alive.» I'm alive. But I feel that I have yet to reach my limits, borders with what? ... And madly I take control of the recesses of myself, my ravings suffocate me with so much beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all of this I won when I stopped loving you. I write to you as an exercise in sketching before painting. I see words.

Words are pebbles rolling in the river

Nostalgia is not for the God who is missing to us, it is a nostalgia for ourselves, for we do not sustain ourselves; we miss our impossible grandeur - my unreachable nowness is my paradise lost.

We shall be inhuman - as humankind's greatest conquest. To be is to be beyond the human. To be a human being doesn't do it, to be human has been a constraint. The unknown awaits us, but I sense that that unknown is a totalization and will be the true humanization we long for. Am I speaking of death? no, of life.

In a state of grace, one sometimes perceives the deep beauty, hitherto unattainable, of another person. And everything acquires a kind of halo which is not imaginary: it comes from the splendor of the almost mathematical light emanating from people and things. One starts to feel that everything in existence - whether people or things - breathes and exhales the subtle light of energy. The world's truth is impalpable.

La bondad era tibia y sin consistencia, olía a carne cruda guardada durante mucho tiempo.

Escribo porque no tengo nada que hacer en el mundo: estoy de sobra y no hay lugar para mí en la tierra de los hombres. Escribo por mi desesperación y mi cansancio, ya no soporto la rutina de ser yo, y si no existiese la novedad continua que es escribir, me moriría simbólicamente todos los días.

Will this story someday become my own congealing? How do I know. If there's any truth in it—and of course the story is true though invented—may everyone recognize it in himself because all of us are one and he who is not poor in money is poor in spirit or longing because he lacks something more precious than gold—there are those who lack the delicate essential.

Feit is dat ik een levenslot in handen heb en me toch niet bij machte voel om vrijuit te scheppen: ik volg de verborgen lijn van het noodlot. Ik kan niet anders dan een waarheid zoeken die me te boven gaat.

Nunca la olvidé: jamás se olvida a una persona con la que se ha dormido.

Perhaps I now knew that I would never be equal to life myself, but that my life was equal to life. I would never reach my root, but my root did exist.

And solitude is not needing. Not needing leaves a person alone, all alone. Oh, needing doesn't isolate a person, things need things: it's enough to see a chick walking to see that its destiny will be what lack will make of it, its destiny is to join, like drops of mercury cling to other drops of mercury, even though, like all drops of mercury, it has a complete and rounded existence in itself.

A prova de que estou recuperando a saúde mental, é que estou cada minuto mais permissiva: eu me permito mais liberdade e mais experiências. E aceito o acaso. Anseio pelo que ainda não experimentei. Maior espaço psíquico. Estou felizmente mais doida. E minha ignorância aumenta. A diferença entre o doido e o não doido é que o não doido não diz nem faz as coisas que pensa.

Todo en el mundo comenzó con un sí. Una molécula dijo sí a otra molécula y nació la vida.

Now I understand what a trial is. Trial: it means that life is trying me. But trial: means that I too am trying. And trying can become an ever more insatiable thirst.