Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispector
Clarice Lispectorwas a Brazilian writer acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories. Born to a Jewish family in Podolia in Western Ukraine, she was brought to Brazil as an infant, amidst the disasters engulfing her native land following the First World War...
NationalityBrazilian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth10 December 1920
CountryBrazil
becoming rotting mature
Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting
knowing mind territory
I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.
world molecules prehistory
Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.
dove made abyss
It is because I dove into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of.
sea lost
Whether she won or lost, she would continue to wrestle with life. It would not be with her own life alone but with all of life. Something had finally been released within her. And there it was, the sea.
sea existence humans
There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.
dream struggle fall
Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world - often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs, and then I go, go to that enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even after that I don’t have courage, I dream.
writing pigs self
I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.
want knows
And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.
beautiful school knowing
Today at school I wrote an essay about Flag Day which was so beautiful, but ever so beautiful - for I even used words without really knowing what they meant.
want made humans
What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.
lost-and-found lost found
I work only with lost and founds.
writing long answers
So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
writing rocks steel
No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.