406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Today I woke up feeling such nostalgia for happiness. My whole life I’ve never been free. I always persecuted myself within me. I’ve became intolerable to myself. I live in the dilacerating duality. I have an apparent freedom but I am imprisoned inside me.