Quotes from Clarice Lispector

The courage to be something other than what one is, to give birth to oneself, and to leave one's former body on the ground. And without having answered to anyone about whether it was worthwhile.

Perhaps love is to give one's own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer. from "The Gift

É possível também que já então meu tema de vida fosse a irrazoável esperança, e que eu já tivesse iniciado a minha grande obstinação: eu daria tudo que era meu por nada, mas queria que tudo me fosse dado por nada.

La consuelo haciéndole entender que también yo padezco la vasta e informe melancolía de haber sido creado.

Death is an encounter with oneself.

Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.

The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don't know. Let us sleep on God and mystery, a quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, behold sleep.

Refugiei-me na doideira porque a razão não me bastava.

These fragments of book mean that I work in ruins.

What I really do when I write you is follow myself, and I'm doing it right now: I'm following myself without knowing what it will lead me to. Sometimes following myself is so hard. Because of following something that's still so nebulous. Sometimes I end up stopping.

The night of today looks at me with torpor, verdigris and lime. I want inside this night that is longer than life, I want, inside this night, life raw and bloody and full of saliva.

Truth is always an interior and inexplicable contact. My truest life is unrecognizable, extremely interior and there is not a single word that defines it. My heart has emptied itself of every desire and been reduced to its own final or primary beat.

Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season

It suddenly occurred to me that you don't need order to live. There is no pattern to follow and the pattern itself doesn't even exist: I am born.

Su cualidad era exactamente no tener cantidad, no ser mensurable ni divisible porque todo lo que se puede medir y dividir tiene un principio y un fin.

her short stories read like perfect songs.

I ask: will she ever someday know love's farewell? Will she ever someday know the swoonings of love? Will she take in her own way the sweet journey? I know nothing. What can you do with the truth that everyone's a little sad and a little alone.

A coerência, não a quero mais. Coerência é mutilação. Quero a desordem.

Macabéa had a passion for horror films and musicals. She especially liked films where the women were hanged or shot through the heart with a bullet. It never dawned on her that she herself was a suicide case even though she had never contemplated killing herself. Her life was duller than plain bread and butter.

And my fear, too, was different now: not the fear of someone who is still about to go in but the so much greater fear of someone who has gone in.

Nothing happened if she kept waiting for what was going to happen .

Everything is heavy with dreams when I paint a cave or write to you about one - out of it comes the clatter of dozens of unfettered horses to trample the shadows with dry hooves, and from the friction of the hooves the rejoicing liberates itself in sparks: here I am, the cave and I, in the time that will rot us.

Se eu me confirmar e me considerar verdadeira, estarei perdida porque não saberei onde engastar meu novo modo de ser - se eu for adiante nas minhas visões fragmentárias, o mundo inteiro terá que se transformar para eu caber nele.

Cuántas veces le había dado una propina exagerada al camarero, sólo porque pensó que él iba a morir y no lo sabía