Quotes from Clarice Lispector

Dónde se guarda la música cuando no suena?, se preguntaba. Y, rendida, contestaba: que hagan un arpa de mis nervios cuando muera.

He hablado mucho sobre la muerte. Pero voy a hablarte ahora sobre el soplo de vida. Cuando uno ya no respira se le hace la respiración boca a boca; se pega la boca a la boca del otro y se respira. Y el otro empieza a respirar otra vez. Este intercambio de respiración es una de las cosas más bellas que he oído contar de la vida. En realidad la belleza de este boca a boca me está deslumbrando.

The most profound of murders: one that is a mode of relating, a way of one being existing the other being, a way of our seeing each other and being each other and having each other, a murder where there is neither victim nor executioner but instead a link of mutual ferocity. My primary struggle for life. "Lost in the Fiery Hell of a Canyon a Woman Struggles Desperately for Life.

And from the instants I extract the juice of their fruits

If a perfect person from the planet Mars landed and discovered that Earthlings got tired and grew old, that person would feel pity and astonishment. Without ever understanding what was good about being human, in feeling tired, in giving out daily; only the initiated would comprehend this subtlety of defectiveness and this refinement of life.

I knew that cockroaches could go more than a month without food or water. And they could even survive on wood for food. And even after you step on them they come apart slowly and keep on walking all the while. Even when they freeze, after they thaw out they keep on going. For three hundred and fifty million years, they have reproduced with no change. When the world was practically naked, they walked slowly across it.

A verdade não faz sentido, a grandeza do mundo me encolhe. Aquilo que provavelmente pedi e finalmente tive, veio, no entanto me deixar carente como uma criança que anda sozinha pela terra. Tão carente que só o amor de todo o universo por mim poderia me consolar e me cumular, só um tal amor que a própria célula-ovo das coisas vibrasse com o que estou chamando de um amor. Daquilo a que na verdade apenas chamo mas sem saber-lhe o nome.

Nesse dia, pois, ele conheceu uma das raras formas de estabilidade: A estabilidade do desejo irrealizável, a estabilidade do ideal inatingível

Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes.

And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.