Quotes from Clarice Lispector

Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed

Queria saber: Depois que se é feliz, o que acontece? O que vem depois?

Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.

I work only with lost and founds.

I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?

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 the 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.

Where does music go when it's not playing?—she asked herself. And disarmed she would answer: May they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

I am only true when I'm alone.

Here is a moment of extravagant beauty: I drink it liquid from the shells of my hands and almost all of it runs sparkling through my fingers: but beauty is like that, it is a fraction of a second, quickness of a flash and then immediately it escapes.

She wasn't crying because of the life she led: because, never having led any other, she'd accepted that with her that was just the way things were. But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling

Never suffer because you don't have an opinion on this or that topic. Never suffer because you are not something or because you are.

To think is an act. To feel is a fact.

I'm restless and harsh and despairing. Although I do have love inside me. I just don't know how to use love. Sometimes it tears at my flesh, like barbs. If I can hold so much love within me, and nevertheless continue to be uneasy, it's because I need God to come. Come, before it's too late. I'm in danger, as is everyone who's alive.

They gave me a name and alienated me from myself.

For one has the right to shout. So, I am shouting.

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn't have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

She was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.

First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself 'Who am I?', she would fall flat on her face. For the question 'Who am I?' creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn't have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.

The word is my fourth dimension.

Escrevo por não ter nada a fazer no mundo: sobrei e não há lugar para mim na terra dos homens. Escrevo porque sou um desesperado e estou cansado, não suporto mais a rotina de me ser e se não fosse a sempre novidade que é escrever, eu me morreria simbolicamente todos os dias. (A hora da estrela)