Clarice Lispector Quotes & Sayings

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

But I also know of yet another life. I know and want it and devour it ferociously. It's a life of magical violence. It's mysterious and bewitching. In it snakes entwine while the stars tremble. Drops of water drip in the phosphorescent darkness of the cave. In that dark the flowers intertwine in a humid fairy garden. And I am the sorceress of that silent bacchanal. I feel defeated by my own corruptibility. And I see that I am intrinsically bad. It's only out of pure kindness that I am good. Defeated by myself. Who lead me along the paths of the salamander, the spirit who rules the fire and lives within it. And I give myself as an offering to the dead. I weave spells on the solstice, spectre of an exorcised dragon. — Clarice Lispector

The chicken lives as if in a dream. She has no sense of reality. All the chicken's fright comes because they're always interrupting her reverie. The chicken is a sound sleep ... The chicken has plenty of inner life. To be honest, the only thing the chicken really has is inner life. Our vision of her inner life is what we call chicken. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

Love? I wanted to go with him, to be on the stronger side, for him to spare me, like one who seeks shelter in the arms of the enemy to stay far from his arrows. It was different than love, I was finding out: I wanted him as a thirsty person desires water, without feelings, without even wanting to be happy. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

There is something here that frightens me. When I figure out what it is that frightens me, I shall also know what I love here. Fear has always guided me toward what I desire. And because I desire, I fear. Often it was fear that took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love is risky. — Clarice Lispector

The steel suddenly touched her heart. Ah, jealousy, it was jealousy, the cold hand mashing her slowly, squeezing her, diminishing her soul. — Clarice Lispector

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

Reality doesn't surprise me. But that's not true: I suddenly feel such a hunger for the "thing to really happen" that I cry out and bite into reality with my lacerating teeth. And afterwards give a sigh over the captive whose flesh I ate. And again, for a long while, I do without real reality and find comfort in living from my imagination. — Clarice Lispector

And woman was mystery in itself, she discovered. There was in all of them a quality of raw material, something that might one day define itself but which was never realized, because its real essence was "becoming". Wasn't it precisely through this that the past was united with the future and with all times? — Clarice Lispector

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

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. — Clarice Lispector

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

But what can I do if you are not touched by my defects, whereas I loved yours. My candour was crushed underfoot by you. — Clarice Lispector

I want shade, I want shade and anonymity.
from "The Departure — Clarice Lispector

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

Everything struck her at times as too precious, impossible to touch. And, at times, what people used as air to breathe, was weight and death for her. — Clarice Lispector

It's hard for me to believe that I will die. Because I'm bubbling in a frigid freshness. My life is going to be very long because each instant is. The impression is that I'm still to be born and I can't quite manage it. — Clarice Lispector

However what Joana has inside her is something stronger than the love that people give and what she has inside her demands more than the love that people receive. — Clarice Lispector

(I dedicate it) - to all those who reached the most alarmingly unsuspected regions within me, all those prophets of the present and who have foretold me to myself until in that instant I exploded into: I. This I that is all of you since I can't stand being just me, I need others in order to get by, fool that I am... — Clarice Lispector

I've always liked putting things in their places. I think it's my only true calling. By ordering things I create and understand at the same time ... Ordering is finding the best form. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

And it's inside myself that I must create someone who will understand. — Clarice Lispector

Let the author beware of popularity, otherwise he will be defeated by success. There is a time when you must take a picture of yourself. Hunger is always the same as the first hunger. The need renews itself empty and entire. — Clarice Lispector

I am blinded. I open my eyes wide and only see. But the secret - that I neither see nor feel. Could I be making here a true orgy of what's behind thought? — Clarice Lispector

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

I see that the wardrobe looks penetrable because it has a door. But when I open it, I see that penetration has been put off: since inside is also a wooden surface, like a closed door. Function of the wardrobe: to keep drag and disguises hidden. Nature: that of the inviolability of things. Relation to people: we look at ourselves in the mirror on the inside of the door, we always look at ourselves in an inconvenient light because the wardrobe is never in the right place: awkward, it stands wherever it fits, always huge, hunchbacked, shy and clumsy, unaware how to be more discreet, for it has too much presence. A wardrobe is enormous, intrusive, sad, kind. — Clarice Lispector

My world today is raw, it is a world of great vital difficulty. Because, more than a star, today I want the thick and black root of the stars, I want the source that always seems dirty, and is dirty, and that is always incomprehensible.
It is with pain that I bid farewell even to the beauty of a child - I want the adult who is more primitive and ugly and drier and more difficult, and who became a child-seed that cannot be broken between the teeth. — Clarice Lispector

First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself 'Who am I?', she would fall flat on her face. For the question 'Who am I?' creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete. — Clarice Lispector

She was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her. — Clarice Lispector

I don't know what my secret is. Tell me about yours, teach me about the secret of each one of us. — Clarice Lispector

To restore you and myself, I return to my state of garden and shade, cool reality, I hardly exist and if I do exist it's with delicate care. Surrounding the shade is a teeming, sweaty heat. I'm alive. But I feel I've not yet reached my limits, bordering on what? Without limits, the adventure of a dangerous freedom. But I take the risk, I live taking it. I'm full of acacias swaying yellow, and I, who have barely begun my journey, begin it with a sense of tragedy, guessed what lost ocean my life steps will take me to. And crazily I latch onto the corners of myself, my hallucinations suffocate me with their beauty. I am before, I am almost, I am never. And all this I gained when I stopped loving you. — Clarice Lispector

I forgot to mention that sometimes this typist is nauseated by the thought of food. This dates from her childhood when she discovered that she had eaten a fried cat. The thought revolted her for ever more. She lost her appetite and felt the great hunger thereafter. She was convinced that she had committed a crime; that she had eaten a fried angel, its wings snapping between her teeth. She believed in angels, and because she believed in them, they existed. — Clarice Lispector

Suffering for a being deepens the heart within the heart. — Clarice Lispector

Give me your unknown hand, since life is hurting me and I don't know how to speak - reality is too delicate, only reality is delicate, my unreality and my imagination are heavier. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

I am finding myself: it's deadly because only death concludes me. But I bear it until the end. I'll tell you a secret: life is deadly. I'll have to interrupt everything to tell you this: death is the impossible and intangible. Death is just future to such an extent that there are those who cannot bear it and commit suicide. It's as life said the following: and there simply was no following. — Clarice Lispector

The docks went to the heart of her life. — Clarice Lispector

I am only true when I'm alone. — Clarice Lispector

She had pacified life so well, taken such care for it not to explode. She had kept it all in serene comprehension, separated each person from the rest, clothes were clearly made to be worn and you could choose the evening movie from the newspaper - everything wrought in such a way that one day followed another. — Clarice Lispector

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent. — Clarice Lispector

I am exploiting the written word with the utmost ease. This alarms me, for I am afraid of losing my sense of order and of plunging into an abyss resounding with cries and shrieks: The Hell of human freedom. But I shall continue — Clarice Lispector

To know when to quit. Whether to give up
this is often the question facing the gambler. No one is taught the art of walking away. And the anguish of deciding if I should keep playing is hardly unusual. Will I be able to quit honorably? or am I the type who waits stubbornly for something to happen? something like, for instance, the end of the world? or whatever it might be, maybe my own sudden death, in which case my decision to give up would be beside the point. — Clarice Lispector

my qualities are so small, the same of those of other men, my flaws, my negative side is beautiful and concave like an abyss. What I am not would leave an enormous hole in the earth. — Clarice Lispector

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But - I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve. — Clarice Lispector

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

Why don't clouds fall, since everything else does? Because gravity is less than the strength of the air that keeps them up there. Clever, right? Yes, but one day they fall as rain. That is my revenge. — Clarice Lispector

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

I ask: will she ever someday know love's farewell? Will she ever someday know the swoonings of love? Will she take in her own way the sweet journey? I know nothing. What can you do with the truth that everyone's a little sad and a little alone. — Clarice Lispector

- Good manners are the best inheritance. - Well I think the best inheritance is lots of money. But one day I'll be very rich - said he who had a demonic grandeur: his strength was bursting. — Clarice Lispector

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

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. — Clarice Lispector

I am well aware that each day is a day stolen from death. I am not — Clarice Lispector

The word is my fourth dimension. — Clarice Lispector

To think is an act. To feel is a fact. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

Why publish what is worthless? Perhaps the worthy is also worthless. Besides, what is obviously worthless has always fascinated me. I have a real affection for things which are incomplete or badly finished, for things awkwardly try to take flight only to fall clumsily to the ground. — Clarice Lispector

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

When I surprise myself in the depths of the mirror I get a fright. I can hardly believe that I have limits, that I am cut out and defined. I feel scattered in the air, thinking inside other beings, living in things beyond myself. 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 at the pale mirror, that there are so many things in me besides what I know, so many things always silent. — Clarice Lispector

An egg is a thing that must be careful. That's why the chicken is the egg's disguise. The chicken exists so that the egg can traverse the ages. That's what a mother is for. — Clarice Lispector

Mama, before she got married, according to Aunt Emilia, was a firecracker, a tempestuous redhead, with thoughts of her own about liberty and equality for women. But then along came Papa, very serious and tall, with thoughts of his own too, about... liberty and equality for women. The trouble was in the coinciding subject matter. There was a collision. And nowadays Mama sews and embroiders and sings at the piano and makes little cakes on Saturdays, all like clockwork and cheerfully, She has ideas of her own, still, but they all come down to one: a wife should always go along with her husband, as the accessory goes along with the principal (my analogy, the result of Law School classes). — Clarice Lispector

What an effort I make to be myself. I struggle against a tide in a boat with just enough room for my two feet in a perilous and fragile balance. — Clarice Lispector

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

I will surpass myself in waves, ah, Lord, and may everything come and fall upon me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain white moments because all I have to do is comply with myself and then nothing will block my path until death-without-fear, from any struggle or rest I will rise up as strong and beautiful as a young horse. — Clarice Lispector

God belongs to those who manage to get him. God appears when you're distracted. — Clarice Lispector

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

Oh, don't pull your hand away from me, I've promised myself that maybe by the end of this impossible narrative I shall understand, oh maybe it will be on Hell's road that I shall be able to find what we need - but don't pull your hand away, even though I now know that the finding has to come on the road of what we are, if I can succeed in not sinking completely into what we are. — Clarice Lispector

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

Never suffer because you don't have an opinion on this or that topic. Never suffer because you are not something or because you are. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

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

Persistence is our effort, giving up is the reward. — Clarice Lispector

She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

I want the material of things. Humanity is drenched with humanization, as if that were necessary; and that false humanization trips up man and trips up his humanity. A thing exists that is fuller, deafer, deeper, less good, less bad, less pretty. Yet that thing too runs the risk, in our coarse hands, of becoming transformed into "purity", our hands that are coarse and full of words. — Clarice Lispector

How do I explain that my greatest fear is precisely in relation to ... to being?" (5) — Clarice Lispector

The world rolls and somewhere out there are things I don't know. Let us sleep on God and mystery, a quiet, fragile ship floating on the sea, behold sleep. — Clarice Lispector

The terrible duty is that of going all the way to the end. And without relying on anyone. To live oneself. — Clarice Lispector

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. — Clarice Lispector

But I'm afraid to begin composing in order to be understood by the imaginary someone, I'm afraid to start to "make" a meaning, with the same tame madness that till yesterday was my healthy way of fitting into a system. Will I need the courage to use an unprotected heart and keep talking to the nothing and the no one? as a child thinks about the nothing. And run the risk of being crushed by chance. — Clarice Lispector

But after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more difficult in this world than to surrender completely. This is one of man's greatest sorrows. — Clarice Lispector

The great question she raised involved me: is it worth while? I do not know, my ever greater calm replied, but it is so. There, before my silence, she surrendered to the process, & if she was asking me the great question, it had to go unanswered. She had to giver herself-for nothing. It had to be. And for nothing. She held back, unwilling to surrender. But I waited. I knew that we are that thing that must happen. I could be useful to her silence. And, dazed by misunderstanding, I could hear a heart beating inside me that was not mine. Before my fascinated eyes, like some emanation, she was being transformed into a child. — Clarice Lispector

When I think of what I already lived through it seems to me I was shedding my bodies along the paths. — Clarice Lispector

Or had you no other means of capturing the grace of this creature except with a collar? Don't you realize that you destroy a rose if you crush it in your hand? I know that tone is unity which cannot be divided by words, I know that I am crushing a rose, but to shatter silence into words is one of my awkward ways of loving silence, & it is in this way that I have so often killed what I understand. — Clarice Lispector

Life really just barely escapes me though the certainty comes to me that life is other and has a hidden style — Clarice Lispector

Facts and particulars annoy me. — Clarice Lispector

Who hasn't asked himself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human? — Clarice Lispector

What I have to say is superfluous for anyone who often feels the pangs of hunger — Clarice Lispector

Should I divulge that she adored soldiers? She was mad about them. Whenever she caught sight of a soldier, she would think, trembling with excitement: is he going to murder me? — Clarice Lispector

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

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

But if I hope to understand in order to accept things - the act of surrender will never happen. I must take the plunge all at once, a plunge that includes comprehension and especially incomprehension. And who am I to dare to think? What I have to do is surrender. How is it done? I know however that only by walking do you know how to walk and - miracle - find yourself walking. — Clarice Lispector

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

Real life is so secret that not even I, who am dying of it, have been given the password, I am dying without knowing of what. — Clarice Lispector

To write I begin by stripping myself of words. I prefer the poor words left over. — Clarice Lispector

As soon as you discover the truth it's already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is it? Reply: it's not. — Clarice Lispector

I just remembered a time when to warm up my spirit I prayed: movement is spirit. Prayer was a means of mutely and hidden from others reaching myself. When I prayed I achieved an emptiness of soul - and that emptiness is all I can ever have. Besides that, nothing. But the emptiness has the value and appearance of plenty. One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my - to my mystery. — Clarice Lispector

But I've never known what to do with people and the things I like, sometimes they weigh me down, ever since I was a girl. — Clarice Lispector