Clarice Lispector Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Life, Saying Yes, Novelists

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

  73 Copy quote

• 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

  Knowing, Mind, Territory

  48 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Answers, Sometimes, Knows

  45 Copy quote

• I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort

  Clarice Lispector

  Simplicity, Effort, Achieve

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

  49 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Thinking, Facts, Feels

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Dove, Made, Abyss

  Clarice Lispector (1988). “The Passion According to G.H.”, p.139, U of Minnesota Press

  51 Copy quote

• 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

  Sea, Lost

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “An Apprenticeship, Or, The Book of Delights”, Austin : University of Texas Press

  45 Copy quote

• 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.

  Clarice Lispector

  Dream, Struggle, Fall

  48 Copy quote

• Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?

  Clarice Lispector

  Being Yourself, Strange

  Clarice Lispector, Johnny Lorenz, Benjamin Moser (2012). “A Breath of Life”, p.59, New Directions Publishing

  49 Copy quote

• 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.

  Clarice Lispector

  Fate, Destiny, Choices

  41 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Knowing

  Clarice Lispector (1988). “The Passion According to G.H.”, p.16, U of Minnesota Press

  3 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Monsters, Persons

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.15, New Directions Publishing

  35 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Truth Is, Wells, Sincerely

  Clarice Lispector (2012). “Near to the Wild Heart”, p.26, New Directions Publishing

  50 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Curiosity, Answers, Given

  Clarice Lispector (1984). “Family Ties”, p.105, University of Texas Press

  42 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Sea, Existence, Humans

  Clarice Lispector (1989). “Soulstorm: Stories”, p.162, New Directions Publishing

  47 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Rotting, Becoming, Mature

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.17, New Directions Publishing

  35 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Believe, Angel, Ems

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Clarice Lispector

  Mistake, Simplicity, Effort

  13 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Giving, Truthful, Single Word

  "The Hour of the Star". Book by Clarice Lispector, 1977.

  26 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Writing, Rocks, Steel

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.19, New Directions Publishing

  29 Copy quote

• 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.

  Clarice Lispector

  Passion, Blow, Love Is

  20 Copy quote

• I work only with lost and founds.

  Clarice Lispector

  Lost, Found, Lost And Found

  Clarice Lispector (1989). “Agua Viva”, p.59, U of Minnesota Press

  12 Copy quote

• 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

  Writing, Pigs, Self

  Clarice Lispector (1986). “The Hour of the Star”, p.70, New Directions Publishing

  33 Copy quote

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

  Clarice Lispector

  Crush, Song, Butterfly

  Clarice Lispector (2012). “Água Viva”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Want, Made, Humans

  34 Copy quote

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