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
knowing
Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage
crush song butterfly
I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers.
writing my-own
I write to save someone's life, probably my own
cheating believe want
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.
facts annoying
Facts and particulars annoy me,
writing long madness
I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.
world goodness planes
In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.
home light people
And now -- now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me? Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.
writing lasts way
I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.
ignorance self law
Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.
roots brazil
Brazil is where I have to be, where I have my roots.
mistake effort simplicity
All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.
suffering world affliction
I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?
hope-love
I, who called love my hope for love.