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
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.
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.
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.
suffering world affliction
I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?
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.
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.
world goodness planes
In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.
facts annoying
Facts and particulars annoy me,
hope-love
I, who called love my hope for love.
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.
crush song butterfly
I hear the mad song of a little bird and crush butterflies between my fingers.
knowing
Living isn't courage, knowing that you're living, that's courage
passion blow love-is
Love is so much more deadly than I had thought, love is so much inherent as the very lack, and we are guaranteed by a need to be renewed continuously. Love is now, is forever. There is just the blow of grace - call it passion.