406 Quotes by Clarice Lispector

They were fine and slender. At any given moment they stopped every bit as much lines, every bit much in the same state as at the beginning. Interrupted, always interrupted not because they terminated, but because no one could take them to the end. Circles were more perfect, less tragic and didn’t move her enough. Circles were the work of man, finished before death and not even God could finish them better. While straight, fine, freestanding lines – were like thoughts.

And one of the things I learned is that one should live in spite of. Although, one should eat. Although, one should love. Although, it must die. Even it is often the same even though it pushes us forward. It was despite the fact that it gave me an unhappy anguish that was the creator of my own life.

It’s hard for me to believe that I will die. Because I’m bubbling in a frigid freshness. My life is going to be very long because each instant is. The impression is that I’m still to be born and I can’t quite manage it.

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.

I can feel myself holding a child, thought Joanna. Sleep, my child, sleep, I tell you. The child is warm and I am sad.

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.

but the crime is more important than the punishment. I enliven all of me in my happy instinct for destruction.

I am obscure to myself. I let myself happen. I unfold only in the now. I am rudely alive.

The steel suddenly touched her heart. Ah, jealousy, it was jealousy, the cold hand mashing her slowly, squeezing her, diminishing her soul.