Clarice Lispector Quotations

I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?

Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession.

All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.

Brazil is where I have to be, where I have my roots.

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.

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

I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

Facts and particulars annoy me,

I, who called love my hope for love.

I just know that I don't want cheating. I refuse. I deepened myself but I don't believe in myself because my thought is invented.

I write to save someone's life, probably my own

I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers.

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

Love is so much more deadly than I had thought, love is so much inherent as the very lack, and we are guaranteed by a need to be renewed continuously. Love is now, is forever. There is just the blow of grace - call it passion.

Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed

Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.

At first she dreamed of sheep, of going to school, of cats drinking milk. Little by little she dreamed of blue sheep, of going to school in the middle of the woods, of cats drinking milk from golden saucers. And her dreams became increasingly dense and acquired colours that were difficult to dilute into words.

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.

For one has the right to shout. So, I am shouting.

For only when I err do I get away from what I know and what I understand. If "truth" were what I can understand, it would end up being but a small truth, my-sized. Truth must reside precisely in what I shall never understand.

And now -- now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me? Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn't have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.

I work only with lost and founds.

But don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.

Holding someone's hand was always my idea of joy.

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

Today at school I wrote an essay about Flag Day which was so beautiful, but ever so beautiful - for I even used words without really knowing what they meant.

To think is an act. To feel is a fact.

Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.

The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

A horse is freedom so indominable that it becomes useless to imprison it to serve man: it lets itself be domesticated, but with a simple, rebellious toss of the head-shaking its mane like an abundance of free-flowing hair-it shows that its inner nature is always wild, translucent and free.

What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

But I welcome the darkness where the two eyes of that soft panther glow. The darkness is my cultural broth. The enchanted darkness. I go on speaking to you, risking disconnection: I’m subterraneously unattainable because of what I know.

I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself.

I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.

Do you know that hope sometimes consists only of a question without an answer?

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

You don't understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body.

I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.

My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.

Her curiosity instructed her more than the answers she was given.

Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?

How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?

Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.

I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort

Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting

It is because I dove into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of.

Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world - often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs, and then I go, go to that enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even after that I don’t have courage, I dream.

Whether she won or lost, she would continue to wrestle with life. It would not be with her own life alone but with all of life. Something had finally been released within her. And there it was, the sea.

I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.