406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

The difference between the insane and the not-insane person is that the latter doesn’t do or say the things he thinks.

But I’m afraid to begin composing in order to be understood by the imaginary someone, I’m afraid to start to “make” a meaning, with the same tame madness that till yesterday was my healthy way of fitting into a system. Will I need the courage to use an unprotected heart and keep talking to the nothing and the no one? as a child thinks about the nothing. And run the risk of being crushed by chance.

It isn’t for us that cows’ milk comes forth, but we drink it. Flowers weren’t made for us to look at or for us to smell, and we look at them and smell them. The Milky Way doesn’t exist for us to know if its existence, but we know.

The word is my fourth dimension.

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

I know that what I am feeling is serious and has the power to destroy me.

Suddenly I’ve become so restless that I’m capable of saying “That is enough” and ending what I’m writing you, which is based mostly on blind words.

Real life is so secret that not even I, who am dying of it, have been given the password, I am dying without knowing of what. And the secret is such that only if the mission is finally carried out do I, all of a sudden, see that I was born entrusted with it – all of life is a secret mission.

Is woede mijn diepste verzet tegen het mens-zijn? Mens-zijn mat me af. En ik ben woedend om het voelen van zoveel liefde. Soms leef ik van de woede tegen het leven. Want de woede wekt me tot leven: ik heb me nooit zo waakzaam gevoeld. Ik weet best dat dit overgaat en dat het noodzakelijke ontberen terugkeert.