406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

O horrível dever é o de ir até o fim. E sem contar com ninguém. Viver-se a si mesma. E para sofrer menos embotar-me um pouco. Porque não posso mais carregar as dores do mundo. Que fazer quando sinto totalmente o que outras pessoas são e sentem? Vivo-as mas não tenho mais força.

she had stared through the window at a little old lady in the sun, grubby, light and quick – a branch quivering in the breeze. A dry branch where there was so much femininity, Joana had thought, that the poor dear could have a child if life hadn’t dried up in her body

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.Living is an act I did not premeditate. I blossomed in the dark. I am only valid for myself. I must live little by little, it's no good living everything at once.

The world independed on me — that was the trust I had reached: the world independed on me, and I am not understanding whatever it is I’m saying, never! never again shall I understand anything I say.

Because a world fully alive has the power of a Hell.

Ah, so that must have been her mystery: she had discovered a trail into the forest. Surely that was where she went during her absences. Returning with her eyes filled with gentleness & ignorance, eyes made whole. An ignorance so vast that inside it all the world's wisdom could be contained & lost.

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.

Somos livres, e este é o inferno.

To write you I first cover myself with perfume.