Quotes from Clarice Lispector

My error, however, had to be the path of truth: for only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If 'truth' were what I can understand…it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized.

É preciso que se saiba. É preciso que se saiba. Que a vida é curta. Que a vida é curta.

Vengo de lejos, de una fuerte ancestralidad. Yo, que vengo del dolor de vivir. Y ya no lo quiero.

Yo, obra anónima sólo justificable mientras dura mi vida. ¿Y después? Después todo lo que he vivido será de una pobreza superflua.

And I am in the world as free and slender as a deer on the plain. I get up as soft as a breath of air, raise my sleepy flower head, my feet light, I cross fields beyond the earth, world, time, God.

Siento que no puedo parar y me asusto. Procuro distraerme del miedo. Pero ya hace mucho que pararon los golpes reales, estoy sintiendo el incesante redoblar en mí.

I want to die with life. I swear that I shall only die profiting from the last instant. There is a profound prayer within me that will be born I don't know when. I would so like to die of health. Like someone exploding. Éclater is better: j'éclate

Ouvira na Rádio Relógio que havia sete bilhões de pessoas no mundo. Ela se sentia perdida. Mas com a tendência que tinha para ser feliz logo se consolou: havia sete bilhões de pessoas para ajudá-la.

Yes, I know," continued Joana. "The distance that separates emotions from words. I've already thought about that. And the most curious thing is that the moment I try to speak not only do I fail to express what I feel but what I feel slowly becomes what I say. Or at least what makes me act is not, most certainly, what I feel but what I say.

I am the priestess of a secret that I no longer know. And I serve out of blissful ignorance. I found out something I was unable to understand, my lips became sealed, and I retained only the incomprehensible fragments of a ritual.

Soy un ser concomitante: reúno en mí el tiempo pasado, el presente y el futuro, el tiempo que late en el tiempo de los relojes.

I can hardly believe that I have limits, that I am cut out and defined. I feel scattered in the air, thinking inside other beings, living in things beyond myself. When I surprise myself at the mirror I am not frightened because I think I am ugly or beautiful. It is because I discover I am of a different nature. After not having seen myself for a while I almost forget I am human, I forget my past and I am as free from end and awareness as something merely alive.

Escucha superficialmente lo que digo y de la falta de sentido nacerá un sentido, como en mí nace inexplicablemente una vida alta y leve. La densa selva de palabras envuelve sólidamente lo que siento y vivo, y transforma todo lo que soy en algo mío que está fuera de mí. La naturaleza es envolvente; me cubre y es sexualmente viva, sólo estoy: viva. También estoy truculentamente viva, y lamo mi hocico como el tigre después de haber devorado el veneno.

Terei que ter a coragem de usar um coração desprotegido e de ir falando para o nada e para o ninguém? Assim como uma criança pensa para o nada. E correr o risco de ser esmagada pelo acaso.

I was becoming aware of myself as one becomes aware of a taste: all of me tasted of steel and verdigris, I was all acid like metal on the tongue, like a crushed green plant, my whole taste rose to my mouth.

And none of this necessarily has any bearing on the issue of the existence or non-existence of a God. What I'm saying is that the thought of the man and the way this thinking-feeling can reach an extreme degree of incommunicability - that, without sophism or paradox, is at the same time, for that man, the point of greatest communication. He communicates with himself.

Dar a mão a alguém sempre foi o que esperei da alegria. Muitas vezes antes de adormecer - nessa pequena luta por não perder a consciência ir para a grandeza do sono, finjo que alguém está me dando a mão e então vou, vou para a enorme ausência de forma que é o sono. E quando mesmo assim não tenho coragem, então eu sonho.

Or had you no other means of capturing the grace of this creature except with a collar? Don't you realize that you destroy a rose if you crush it in your hand? I know that tone is unity which cannot be divided by words, I know that I am crushing a rose, but to shatter silence into words is one of my awkward ways of loving silence, & it is in this way that I have so often killed what I understand.

Depois que descobri em mim mesma como é que se pensa, fazendo comigo mesma negociatas, nunca mais pude acreditar no pensamento dos outros.

I want geometric streaks that cross in the air and form a disharmony that I understand. Pure 'it

Time for me means the dissolution of matter. The rotting of the organic as if time were a worm robbing the fruit of its pulp. Time does not exist. What we call time is the movement of the evolution of things, but time itself does not exist. Or it exists immutably and into time we transfer ourselves.

Não quero ter a terrível limitação de quem vive apenas do que é passível de fazer sentido.

Özgürlük? Benim nihai s???na??m, kendimi özgürlüÄŸe zorlad?m ve bunu bir yetenek gibi deÄŸil de kahramanl?k gibi ta??yorum: kahramanca özgürüm. Ve ak??? istiyorum.

É QUE um mundo todo vivo tem a força de um Inferno.