406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality – the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself.

I feel as though I’ve already achieved what I wanted and I still don’t know what I achieved. Could that be the somewhat dubious and elusive thing vaguely called ‘experience’?

I find the greatest serenity in hallucination.

I had reached nothingness, and the nothingness was live and moist.

Nothing is more difficult than surrendering to the instant. That difficulty is human pain. It is ours. I surrender in words and surrender when I paint.

Though I sometimes scream: I no longer want to be I! but I stick to myself and inextricably there forms a tessitura of life.

Now I understand what a trial is. Trial: it means that life is trying me. But trial: means that I too am trying. And trying can become an ever more insatiable thirst.

Where does music go when it’s not playing? – she asked herself. And disarmed she would answer: May they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

I write to save someone’s life, probably my own.