Quotes from Clarice Lispector

No. It's not easy. But it "is." I ate my own placenta so as not to have to eat for four days. To have milk to give you. Milk is a "this." And no one is I. No one is you. That is what solitude is.

Para Sartre a existência precede a essência, no sentido de que existir precede isso que nós somos; e que somos o que nós mesmos escolhemos ser.

Uma pessoa leu meus contos e disse que aquilo não era literatura, era lixo. Concordo. Mas há hora para tudo. Há também a hora do lixo. (Someone read my stories and said that it wasn't literature, it was rubbish. I agree. But there is time for everything. There's also garbage time).

Yes, she would explain to neither of them that everything was slowly changing... That she had put away her smile like one who has finally turned off the lamp and decided to go to bed. Now no living thing was allowed in her inner self, merging into it. The way she related to people was becoming increasingly different to the way she related to herself.

Mas se não compreendo o que escrevo a culpa não é minha. Tenho que falar porque falar salva. Mas não tenho nenhuma palavra a dizer.

Hell's orgy is the apotheosis of the neutral. Black Sabbath joy is the joy of losing oneself in the atonal. What still frightened me was that even that very unpunishable horror would be benignly reabsorbed into the abyss of time, into the abyss of unending heights, into the profound abyss of God: absorbed into the core of an indifference. . . . an interested indifference, an attainable indifference. It was an extremely energetic indifference.

Adiós. No, quien viaja por la noche solo mira por la ventana y no dice adiós.

It's like moments I had with you, when I would love you, moments I couldn't go past because I descended into their depths.

And all this is in this very instant, is in the now. But at the same time the present instant is completely removed because of the immense magnitude of God.

Sofremos por ter tão pouca fome, embora nossa pequena fome já dê para sentirmos uma profunda falta de prazer que teríamos se fôssemos de fome maior.

I lost something that was essential to me, and that no longer is. I no longer need it, as if I'd lost a third leg that up until then made it impossible for me to walk but that turned me into a stable tripod… I know I can only walk with two legs. But I feel the useless absence of that third leg and it scares me, it was the leg that made me something findable by myself, and without even having to look for myself.

I am still corrupted by the condiment of the world.

Have I somehow perhaps been in a hurry to experience everything I would have to experience as soon as possible, so that I would have extra time to… to live without facts? to live . Did I early on discharge all my sense duties - early and quickly experience pains and pleasures - to get free all the sooner of my lesser human destiny? to get free so that I could seek my tragedy.

Na vida nós somos artistas de uma peça de teatro absurdo escrita por um Deus absurdo.

Un hombre tarda en encontrar sus manos

But there are those who starve to death and all I can do is be born. My rigmarole is: what can I do for them? My answer is: paint a fresco in adagio. I could suffer the hunger of others in silence but a contralto voice makes me sing—I sing dull and black. It's my message of a person alone. A person eats another from hunger. But I fed myself with my own placenta. And I'm not going to bite my nails because this is a tranquil adagio.

Desde que descobrira - mas descobrira realmente com um tom espantado - que ia morrer um dia, então não teve mais medo da vida, e, por causa da morte, dinha direitos totais: arriscava tudo.

I am not mad out of solidarity with the thousands of us who, in order to construct the possible, also sacrificed the truth which would be a madness.

I, neutral cockroach body, I with a life that at last is not eluding me because I finally see it outside of myself -- I am the cockroach, I am my leg, I am my hair, I am the section of brightest light on the wall plaster -- I am every Hellish piece of myself -- life is so pervasive in me that if they divide me in pieces like a lizard, the pieces will keep on shaking and writhing.

Escrevo e assim me livro de mim e posso então descansar.

The human condition is Christ's passion.

I was really in the room.

Give me your anonymous hand, for life is giving me pain and I don't know how to go on talking - reality is too delicate, only reality is delicate, my unreality and my imagination are more substantial.

Dear God, how sweetly she sank into the incomprehension of herself.