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Clarice Lispector

121 quotes

“we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humility in living isn’t my strong point. But when I write I’m fated to be humble. Though within limits. Because the day I lose my own importance inside me — all will be lost.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remembering that day, which she saw again, she thought that from now on this was all she wanted from the God: to rest her chest on him, and not say a word.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh God! Having just one life was so little.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Could love be giving your own solitude to another? Because that's the ultimate thing you can give of yourself.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I’m an insurmountable mountain along my own path. But sometimes through a word of yours or a word I read, suddenly everything becomes clear.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it's only when we forget all our knowledge that we begin to know”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There was beauty in that body that was neither ugly nor pretty, in that face in which a sweetness eager for greater sweetnesses was its sign of life. (from "A criada")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...when the celebration was fast approaching, what could explain the inner tumult that came over me? As if the budding world were finally opening into a big scarlet rose. (from "Restos do Carnaval")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wasn't actually distracted, my guard was just down, I was being something quite rare: free. (from "Perdoando Deus")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The two murmured more than talked: they had just started dating and were giddy, it was love. Love and what comes with it: jealousy. (beginning of "O primeiro beijo" )”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. (p14)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“what beautiful music I hear deep within myself. It’s made of geometric lines crisscrossing in the air. It’s chamber music. Chamber music is melody-less. It’s a way of expressing silence. What I’m writing you is chamber music. (p37)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I walk on a tightrope up to the edge of my dream. Guts tortured by voluptuousness guide me, fury of impulses. Before I organise myself, I must disorganize myself internally. To experience that first and fleeting primary state of freedom. Of the freedom to err, fall and get up again. (p55)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I, who manufacture the future like a diligent spider. And the best of me is when I know nothing and manufacture whatever. (p55)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But I don’t know how to capture what takes place except by living each thing that now and at the instant happens to me and it’s not important what. I let the horse gallop free, fiery from pure, noble joy. I, who run nervously and only reality delimits me. And when the day comes to an end I hear the crickets and I become full of thousands of tiny, clamouring birds. And each thing that happens to me I live here, taking note of it. Because I want to feel in my inquiring hands the living and trembling of what is today. (p58)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beyond the ear there is a sound, at the far end of sight a view, at the tips of the fingers an object--that's where I'm going. (beginning of the story "É para lá que eu vou")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This thing is the most difficult for a person to understand. Keep trying. Don't get discouraged. It will seem obvious. But it is extremely difficult to know about it. For it involves time. (beginning of "O relatório da coisa")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes she didn't think. Sometimes a person sat there being. She didn't have to do. Being was already doing. You could be slowly or a bit fast. (from "A partida do trem")”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything in 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 prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Let no one be mistaken. I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing...”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is always some inner power without explanation. The more genuine part of my life is unrecognizable, extremely intimate and impossible to define. (p11)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting (p17)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. (p61)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who hasn't asked oneself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human? (p7 Benjamin Moser translation)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was born in Ukraine, but already fleeing. My parents stopped in a village that’s not even on the map, called Chechelnik, for me to be born, and came to Brazil, where I arrived when I was two months old. So calling me a foreigner is nonsense. I’m more Brazilian than Russian, obviously.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“when I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all. Eventually, I discovered that that’s how it was, and I said, “I want that, too.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I was what I still am, a daring shy person. I’m shy, but I throw myself into things.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without yet realizing that, for me, form and meaning are one single thing. The phrase arrives already made.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“what interests me is jotting things down. Putting it all together is a bore.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Between Ermelinda and Vitória, in “The Apple in the Dark,” which is more Clarice?) CL: Maybe Ermelinda, because she was fragile and scared. Vitória is a woman that I’m not. I’m Martim.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t reread. It nauseates me. When it’s published, it’s like a dead book—I don’t want to hear anything more about it. And, when I read it, I think it’s weird, I think it’s bad, that’s why I don’t read it. I also don’t read the translations that they do of my books, in order not to get annoyed.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t write as a catharsis, to get something off my chest. I never got anything off my chest in a book. That’s what friends are for. I want the thing itself.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never know beforehand what I’m going to write. There are writers who start writing only when they have the book in their head. Not me. I just follow along, and I don’t know where it’s going to end up. Then I start understanding what I wanted.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When I’m not working, I read a review, and it’s all fine. When I’m working, a review of my work interferes with my intimate life, so I stop writing in order to forget the review. Even the positive ones, since I take care to cultivate humility. So sometimes I even feel attacked by praise.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am not a professional writer, because I write only when I want to.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(You never felt a violent impact from a book?) CL: A bit, sometimes. I felt it with “Crime and Punishment,” by Dostoyevsky, which gave me a real fever. “Steppenwolf” turned me upside down.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don’t know how to explain it, but prizes are outside of literature—by the way, “literature” is a hateful word—yes, they’re outside the act of writing. You receive it the way you receive a hug from a friend, with a certain pleasure. But it has nothing to do with—(It’s circumstantial?) CL: Yes.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(You, as a person, in the context of the world today, do you feel like part of society, or do you feel solitary?) CL: Well, I have friends, friendships, but writing is a solitary act. Outside the act of writing, I get along with people. (So you don’t feel solitude?) CL: Sometimes, sometimes, even quite deeply. Alceu Amoroso Lima wrote something that’s been repeated a lot, that I was in a tragic solitude in Brazilian letters.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(You even said that your liberation would be being able not to write.) CL: Of course! Writing is a burden!”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I want to know, what will that matter after I die? (Well, the main value it has is that your name will remain in Brazilian literature.) CL: You think it will? I don’t write for posterity.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What’s natural is supernatural, too. Don’t think that it’s very far off. What’s natural is already a mystery.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is not a lament, it's the cry of a bird of prey. An iridescent and restless bird. The kiss upon the dead face. 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.”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm afraid to write. It's so dangerous. Anyone who's tried, knows. The danger of stirring up hidden things - and the world is not on the surface, it's hidden in its roots submerged in the depths of the sea. In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it's a terribly dangerous void: it's where I wring out blood. I'm a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others - Which? maybe I'll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well. (p5)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life has no adjective. It's a mixture in a strange crucible but that allows me on the end, to breathe. And sometimes to pant. And sometimes to gasp. Yes. But sometimes there is also the deep breath that finds the cold delicateness of my spirit, bound to my body for now. (p10)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wonder: why does God demand our love? possible answer: so that we might love ourselves and in loving ourselves, forgive ourselves. And how we need forgiveness. Because life itself already comes muddled with error. (p10)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is written here...are the remains of a demolition of soul, they are lateral cuts of a reality that constantly escapes me. These fragments of book mean that I work in ruins. (p11)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest. (p12)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“At this moment” is a rare thing because only sometimes do I step with both feet on the land of the present; usually one foot slides toward the past, the other slides toward the future. And I end up with nothing. (p25)”
Clarice Lispector (1920–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source