Quotes from Clarice Lispector

I'm writing about the meager minimum adorning it with purple, jewels and splendor. Is this how you write? No, it's not by accumulation but by stripping naked. But I fear nakedness, since it is the last word.

she had stared through the window at a little old lady in the sun, grubby, light and quick – a branch quivering in the breeze. A dry branch where there was so much femininity, Joana had thought, that the poor dear could have a child if life hadn't dried up in her body

De toekomst had tenminste het voordeel niet het heden te zijn, wat slecht is kan altijd beter worden.

And I shall not wander "from thought to thought," but from mood to mood. We shall be inhuman — as the loftiest conquest of man. Being is being beyond human. Being man does not work, being man has been a constraint. The unknown awaits us, but I feel that this unknown is a totalization and will be the true humanization for which we longed. Am I speaking of death? no, of life. It is not a state of happiness, it is a state of contact.

My maturing of a theme would already be a cantabile aria— so let somebody else make another song— the song of the maturing of my quartet. This is before the maturing. The melody would be the fact.

What trips up my life is writing.

Since I am, the thing to do is to be

Haverá um ano em que haverá um mês, em que haverá uma semana em que haverá um dia em que haverá uma hora em que haverá um segundo e dentro do segundo haverá o não-tempo sagrado da morte transfigurada.

For her reality was too much to be believed.

What Angela writes can be read aloud: her words are voluptuous and give physical pleasure. I am geometric, Angela is a spiral, all finesse. She is intuitive, I am logical. She is not afraid to err in the use of words. And I do not err. I am well aware that she is the succulent grape and I am the raisin.

Elk ding is een woord

Ne olduÄŸumu bilmediÄŸimden, "olmamak" gerçeÄŸe en yak?n olduÄŸum yerdi: en az?ndan madalyonun öteki yüzü kontrolümde: en az?ndan "-mamak"a sahiptim, tersime sahiptim. O zaman benim için neyin iyi olduÄŸunu bilmiyordum; benim için kötü olana da böylece ?s?nm?? oldum.

Yes, she was happy inside her neurosis. War neurosis.

I don't have anything to nourish me: I eat myself

Here I am ready for life! Dear sirs, no one's looking at me, no one realises I exist! Yet, dear sirs, I exist, I swear that I exist! Very much, even. Look, all of you, with that triumphant attitude, look: I can vibrate, vibrate like the taunt of a harp. I can suffer with more intensity than any of you, gentleman. I am superior. And do you know why? Because I know I exist!

Only later did she think with satisfaction: I'm a typist and a virgin, and I like coca-cola.

Tudo no mundo começou com um sim. Uma molécula disse sim a outra molécula e nasceu a vida. Mas antes da pré-história havia a pré-história da pré-história e havia o nunca e havia o sim. Sempre houve. Não sei o quê, mas sei o que o universo jamais começou.

Every idea that occurred to him, because he became familiar with it in seconds, came with the fear of having stolen it.

So she repented. Since she wasn't quite sure for what, she repented entirely and for everything.

Above all, she went on thinking, she understands life because she is not sufficiently intelligent not to understand it.

How could it be in that cavity-ridden body so much lasciviousness could fit, without her even knowing she had it.

The heart must present itself alone to the Nothing and alone beat out in silence its palpitations in the shadows. You only sense your own heart in your ears. When it presents itself completely naked, it's not even communication, it's submission. For we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.

As for music, where does it go? The only concrete thing in music is the instrument.

And woman was mystery in itself, she discovered. There was in all of them a quality of raw material, something that might one day define itself but which was never realized, because its real essence was "becoming". Wasn't it precisely through this that the past was united with the future and with all times?