Quotes from Clarice Lispector

Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

The doctor simply refused to take pity. And added: when you don't know what to eat make a nice Italian spaghetti.

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. I am also surprised, eyes open pale at the mirror, that there are so many things in me besides what I know, so many things always silent.

Se não tivesse sido eu, eu não saberia, e tendo sido eu, eu soube.

I don't want to have the terrible limitation of those who live merely from what can make sense. Not I: I want an invented truth.

I feel as though I've already achieved what I wanted and I still don't know what I achieved. Could that be the somewhat dubious and elusive thing vaguely called 'experience'?

Sou um monstro ou isso é ser uma pessoa?

É que ela sentia falta de encontrar-se consigo mesma e sofrer um pouco é um encontro.

I think we have to do forbidden things, otherwise we suffocate. But without feeling guilty and instead as an announcement that we are free.

Vivimos exclusivamente en el presente pues siempre y eternamente es el día de hoy -y el día de mañana será un hoy, la eternidad es el estado de las cosas en este momento.

this is a feast of words.

Only then did she see that her life was miserable. She felt like crying when she saw her other side, she who, as I said, had always thought she was happy.

Instead of obtaining myself by fleeing, I find myself forsaken, alone, tossed into a dimensionless cubicle, where light and shadow are quiet ghosts. In my interior I find the silence I seek. But in it I become so lost from any memory of a human being and of myself that I make this impression into the certainty of physical solitude. If I were to scream - already without lucidity I imagine - my voice would receive the same, indifferent echo of the walls of the earth

E, se atravessara o amor e o seu inferno, penteava-se agora diante do espelho, por um instante sem nenhum mundo no coração. Antes de se deitar, como se apagasse uma vela, soprou a pequena flama do dia.

I also want the figurative like a painter who only paints abstract colors but wants to show that he does so because he chooses to, not because he can't draw.

And one of the things I learned is that one should live in spite of. Although, one should eat. Although, one should love. Although, it must die. Even it is often the same even though it pushes us forward. It was despite the fact that it gave me an unhappy anguish that was the creator of my own life.

Who hasn't ever wondered: am I monster or is this what it means to be a person?

Do not be frightened. Death is instantaneous and passes in a flash. I know, for I have just died with the girl. Forgive my dying. It was unavoidable.

Enquanto eu tiver perguntas e não houver resposta continuarei a escrever.

Quem já não se perguntou: sou um monstro ou isto é ser uma pessoa?

I had reached nothingness, and the nothingness was live and moist.

I was now so much greater that I could no longer see myself. As great as a far-off landscape. I was far off. But perceptible in my furthest mountains and in my remotest rivers: the simultaneous present no longer scared me, and in the furthest extremity of me I could finally smile without even smiling. At last I was stretching beyond my sensibility.

Last night — it's hard to explain to you — last night I dreamed that I was dreaming. Could it be like that after death? the dream of a dream of a dream of a dream.

Before her birth was she an idea? Before her birth was she dead? And after her birth she would die? What a thin slice of watermelon.