406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

I write very simple and very naked. That’s why it wounds. I’m a grey and blue landscape. I rise in a dry fountain and in the cold light.

I knew that cockroaches could go more than a month without food or water. And they could even survive on wood for food. And even after you step on them they come apart slowly and keep on walking all the while. Even when they freeze, after they thaw out they keep on going. For three hundred and fifty million years, they have reproduced with no change. When the world was practically naked, they walked slowly across it.

Eu antes era uma mulher que sabia distinguir as coisas quando as via. Mas agora cometi o erro grave de pensar.

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.

I must not forget, I thought, that I have been happy, that I am being happier than one can be. But I forgot, I’ve always forgotten.

I just know that I don’t want cheating. I refuse. I deepened myself but I don’t believe in myself because my thought is invented.

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

Above all, she went on thinking, she understands life because she is not sufficiently intelligent not to understand it.

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