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Clarice Lispector
121 quotes
“It is not easy to remember how and why I wrote a story or a novel. Once they detach from me, I too find them unfamiliar. It's not a "trance," but the concentration during the writing seems to take away the awareness of whatever isn't writing itself.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This text appears in the "Back of the Drawer" section of The Foreign Legion (1964)
“I have an affectionate fondness for the unfinished, the poorly made, whatever awkwardly attempts a little flight and falls clumsily to the ground.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Traduzo, sim, mas fico cheia de mêdo de ler traduções que fazem de livros meus. Além de ter basntante enjôo de reler coisas minhas, fico também com mêdo do que o tradutor possa ter feito com um texto meu...”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1968 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Traduzir procurando não trair, Jóia, page 158, May 1968.
“One of the most intense aspirations of the spirit is to dominate exterior reality through the spirit. Lucrécia doesn't manage to do this--so she "clings" to that reality, takes as her own life the wider life of the world.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1970 letter originally published in Jornal do Brasil
“It's not apparent to me that all these intimate movements of the book, as well as others that complement them-were drowned by what you call the "spell of the phrase." Ever since my first book, moreover, there's been talk about my "phrases." Do not doubt, however, that I wanted - and reached, by God - some thing through them, and not the phrases themselves.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1970 letter originally published in Jornal do Brasil
“I just want to say that I write not for money but on impulse.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Explanation" in A via crucis do corpo (1974)
“I am so lost. But that is exactly how we live; lost in time and space.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: from "Brasilia" in Visão do esplendor (1975), translated into English by Katrina Dodson as "Vision of Splendor" in Complete stories (2015)
“I have been sculpted into so many statues and haven't frozen in place ("Obsession")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was sad and tall. He never spoke to me without making it understood that his gravest flaw lay in his tendency toward destruction. And that was why, he'd say, stroking his black hair as if stroking the soft, hot fur of a kitten, that was why his life amounted to a pile of shards: some shiny, others clouded, some cheerful, others like a "piece of a wasted hour," meaningless, some red and full, others white, but already shattered. (beginning of "História interrompida")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Really nothing happened on that gray afternoon in April. Everything, however, foretold a big day. (beginning of "Trecho")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Twelve years weigh on a person like pounds of lead. The days melt into one another, merge to form one whole block, a big anchor. And the person is lost. ("A fuga")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She sat down in a way that made her own weight "iron" her wrinkled skirt. She smoothed her hair, her blouse. Now, all she could do was wait. (beginning of "Gertrudes pede um conselho")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Today is Sunday and the city is lovely. There is no one on the streets and all the trees exist solitary and sovereign. The worries and desires and hatreds have dwindled, stretched out upon the earth, tired of existing. And at the level of my mouth all I find is the sweet, pure air of calm renunciation. (from "Cartas a Hermengardo")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was looking for a way to pour some of myself out, before I completely overflowed (from "Another Couple of Drinks")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were many good feelings. Climbing the hill, stopping at the top and, without looking, feeling the ground covered behind her, the farm in the distance. The wind ruffling her clothes, her hair. Her arms free, heart closing and opening wildly, but her face bright and serene under the sun. And knowing above all that the earth beneath her feet was so deep and so secret that she need not fear the invasion of understanding dissolving its mystery. This feeling had a quality of glory. (p36)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the twinkling of the stars pains me, if this distant communication is possible, it is because something almost like a star quivers within me. (p59)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“there are so many things in me besides what I know, so many things always silent. Why unspeaking? (p60)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet. (p61)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She feared the days, one after another, without surprises, of pure devotion to a man. To a man who would freely use of all of his wife’s forces for his own bonfire, in a serene, unconscious sacrifice of everything that wasn’t his own personality. (p80)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...jealousy, it was jealousy, the cold hand mashing her slowly, squeezing her, diminishing her soul. (p135)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The words are pebbles rolling in the river. (p179)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet around her things were living so violently sometimes. The sun was fire, the earth solid and possible, plants were sprouting alive, trembling, whimsical, houses were made so that in them bodies could be sheltered, arms would wrap around waists, for every being and for every thing there was another being and another thing in a union that was a burning end with nothing beyond.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Courage however was deciding to start. As long as she didn't begin, the city was intact. And it would be enough to start looking to smash it into a thousand pieces that she could never put back together afterward. It was a patience of constructing and demolishing and constructing again and knowing she might die one day right when she'd demolished in the process of building.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even error was a discovery. Erring would make her find the other face of objects and touch their dusty sides. (6: Sketch of the City)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There wasn't so much as a gesture that could express the new reality. (9: The Exposed Treasure)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He walked looking at the buildings in the rain, impersonal and omniscient again, blind in the blind city; but an animal knows its forest; and even if it gets lost - getting lost is a path too. (11: The First Deserters)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Early in the morning it was always the same thing renewed: waking up. Which was languorous, unfurling vast. Vastly she'd open her eyes. (beginining of "Preciosidade")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was one of those mornings that seem to hang in the air. And that are most akin to the idea we have of time. (beginining of "Começos de uma Fortuna")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This tale begins in March on a night as dark as night can get when a person is asleep. The peaceful way in which time was passing could be seen in the high passage of the moon across the sky. Then later on, much deeper into night, the moon too disappeared. There was nothing now to distinguish Martim's sleep from the slow and moonless garden. When a man slept so deeply, he came to be the same as that tree standing over there or the hop of a toad in the darkness.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sitting there in his plot he was enjoying his own vast emptiness. That way of not understanding was the primeval mystery and he was an inextricable part of it. (chapter 6)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for Martim, he had time. In fact, he seemed to have discovered time. (Chapter 10)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That was how that man was growing, the way a rolling thing takes on volume. He was growing calmly, emptily, indirectly, patiently advancing. (chapter 10)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the last analysis a man is measured by his hunger; there is no other way of figuring things out. (chapter 1)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Repetition seemed essential to him. Every time it was repeated, something seemed to have been added. So much so that Martim was already starting to get upset-he was a man, but something worrisome remained: what does a man do? (chapter 1)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the point at which, that afternoon up on the hill, Martim began to judge himself. The unpleasant time for explanations had arrived. (Chapter 2)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Growth is full of tricks and self-derision and fraud; only a few people have the requisite dishonesty not to become nauseated. With the fierceness of self-preservation Martim could no longer permit himself the luxury of decency or interrupt himself with sincerity. (chapter 3)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To Potential Readers: This is a book just like any other book. But I would be happy if it were read only by people whose outlook is fully formed. People who know that an approach-to anything whatsoever-must be carried out gradually and laboriously, that it must traverse even the very opposite of what is being approached. They and they alone will, slowly, come to understand that this book exacts nothing of anyone. Over time, the character G. H. came to give me, for example, a very difficult pleasure; but it is called pleasure.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me. But while I was held down, was I happy? Or was there — and there was — an uncanny, restless something in my happy prison routine. Or was there - and there was - that trobbing something to which I was so accustomed that I thought throbbing was the same as being a person? Isn't that it? yes, that too...that too... (p5)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage (p16)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence. (p90)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is because I dove into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of. (p139)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Was that, then, the way we do things? "Not knowing"— was that the way the most profound things happened? would something always, always have to be apparently dead for the really living to happen? had I had not to know that it was living? Was the secret of never escaping from the greater life the secret of living like a sleepwalker? (p159)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go to seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. (p169)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As for my Saturday-swaying outside the window in acacias and shadows-I preferred, instead of squandering it, to grasp it in my tight fist, where I crumpled it like a handkerchief. ("The Sharing of Loaves")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a simple situation, a fact to mention and forget. But if you're imprudent enough to linger an instant longer than you should, a foot sinks in and you're involved. From the instant we venture into it, it's no longer one more fact to tell, we begin to lack the words that would not betray it. At that point, we're in too deep, the fact is no longer a fact and becomes merely its dispersed repercussion. Which, if overly stunted, will one day explode as it did on this Sunday afternoon, when it hasn't rained for weeks and when, like today, beauty desiccated persists nonetheless as beauty.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This story could be called "The Statues." Another possible name is "The Murder." And also "How to Kill Cockroaches." So I will tell at least three stories, all true because they don't contradict each other. Though a single story, they would be a thousand and one, were I given a thousand and one nights. (beginnning of "A quinta história")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was a being who chose. Among the thousand things he might have been, he had gone along choosing himself. In work for which he wore glasses, discerning whatever he could and using his damp hands to grope at whatever he couldn't see, the being kept choosing and therefore would indirectly choose himself. Bit by bit he had gathered himself into being. He kept separating, separating. (beginning of "Perfil de sêres eleitos")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…the greatest obstacle to my progress is me. I myself have been the biggest difficulty in my path. It’s with enormous effort that I’m able to overcome myself.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah how much easier to to bear and understand pain than that promise of spring’s frigid and liquid joy. And with such modesty she was awaiting it: the poignancy of goodness.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There could only be a meeting of their mysteries if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds done with the trust with which two understandings might surrender to each other.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source