Quotes About Identity

It is curious that I can´t say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can´t say it. More than anything, I´m afraid to say it, because 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.

What did I know about whatever it was that others obviously saw in me? how would I know if I went around with my stomach pressed into the dust of the ground. Truth has no witness? being isn't knowing? If a person doesn't look and doesn't see, does the truth exist anyway? The truth that doesn't transmit itself even to those who can see. Is that the secret of being a person?

Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet.—I am thus a toy that is wound up and which when done will not find its own, deeper life.

Not having been born an animal is one of my secret nostalgias.

Já me parece sinceramente não pertencer mais a nenhum lugar, tenho medo disso. Mas vamos deixar o futuro ao futuro.

Do I not have a plot to my life? for I am unexpectedly fragmentary.

I was no longer a little girl with a book: I was a woman with her lover.

Are we fruit of the same tree? No — Angela is everything I wanted to be and never was. What is she? She's the waves of the sea. While I'm the dense and gloomy forest. I'm in the depths. Angela scatters in sparkling fragments. Angela is my vertigo.

Clarice Lispector

Simplesmente sou eu. E você é você. É vasto, vai durar. (...) Olha para mim e me ama. Não: tu olhas para ti e te amas. É o que está certo.

Macabéa, Hail Mary, full of grace, serene promised land, land of forgiveness, the time must come, ora pro nobis, and I use myself as a form of knowledge. I know you to the bone through an incantation that comes from me to you. To scatter oneself wildly and yet behind everything pulses an inflexible geometry.

Am I one of the weak? a weak woman possessed by incessant and mad rhythm? if I were solid and strong would I even have heard the rhythm? I find no answer: I am.

Ter nascido me estragou a saúde.

The impression is that I'm still to be born and I can't quite manage it. I'm a heart beating in the world.

I always wanted to reach a state of peace and non-struggle. I thought that was the ideal state. But it so happens that — that am I really me without my struggle? No, I don't know how to have peace.

Só uma vez se fez uma trágica pergunta: Quem sou eu? Assustou-se tanto que parou completamente de pensar.

No fundo, Ana sempre tivera necessidade de sentir a raiz firme das coisas. E isso um lar perplexamente lhe dera. Por caminhos tortos, viera a cair num destino de mulher, com a surpresa de nele caber como se o tivesse inventado

Vê, meu amor, vê como por medo já estou organizando, vê como ainda não consigo mexer nesses elementos primários do laboratório sem logo querer organizar a esperança. (...) É uma metamorfose em que perco tudo o k tinha, e o que eu tinha era eu - só tenho o k sou. E agora o que sou? Sou: estar de pé diante de um susto. (...) Não entendo e tenho medo de entender, o material do mundo me assusta, com os seus planetas e baratas.

I am afraid to be who I am. There is a total silence within me. I get scared.

E digo: eu está apaixonada pelo teu eu. Então nós é.

Só agora sei que eu já tinha tudo, embora do modo contrário: eu me dedicava a cada detalhe do não. Detalhadamente não sendo, eu me provava que – que eu era.

But as long as I have myself I won't be alone

Voltando ao meu cansaço, estou cansada de tanta gente me achar simpática. Quero os que me acham antipática porque com esses eu tenho afinidade: tenho profunda antipatia por mim.

No quiero la belleza, quiero la identidad.