406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

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.

I am not an intellectual, I write with my body. And what I write is a moist fog.

Because there are times when a person needs a little bitty death and doesn’t even know it. As for me, I substitute the act of death for a symbol of it. A symbol that can be summed up in a deep kiss but not on a rough wall but mouth-to-mouth in the agony of pleasure that is death. I, who symbolically die several times just to experience the resurrection.

My maturing of a theme would already be a cantabile aria – so let somebody else make another song – the song of the maturing of my quartet. This is before the maturing. The melody would be the fact.

The sea, the sea’s swell, silent and breathless.

Mis desequilibradas palabras son el lujo de mi silencio.

In no sense an intellectual, I write with my body.

The night of today looks at me with torpor, verdigris and lime. I want inside this night that is longer than life, I want, inside this night, life raw and bloody and full of saliva.

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.