406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

At this moment” is a rare thing because only sometimes do I step with both feet on the land of the present; usually one foot slides toward the past, the other slides toward the future. And I end up with nothing.

It is curious that I can’t say who I am. That is to say, I know it all too well, but I can’t say it.

What an effort I make to be myself. I struggle against a tide in a boat with just enough room for my two feet in a perilous and fragile balance.

And giving myself over with the confidence of belonging to the unknown. For I can pray only to what I do not know. And I can love only the unknown evidence of things and can add myself only to what I do not know. Only that is a real giving of oneself.

I’m going to start my exercise in courage, living isn’t courage, knowing that you’re living, that’s courage.

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it – and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But – I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve.

As soon as you discover the truth it’s already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is it? Reply: it’s not.

Because there are times when a person needs a little bitty death and doesn’t even know it.

I was now so much greater that I could no longer see myself. As great as a far-off landscape. I was far off. But perceptible in my furthest mountains and in my remotest rivers: the simultaneous present no longer scared me, and in the furthest extremity of me I could finally smile without even smiling. At last I was stretching beyond my sensibility.