Clarice Lispector quotes - page 2

Clarice Lispector was a Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer and journalist, celebrated for her innovative and introspective literary style. Her works are known for their deep psychological insight and poetic language, exploring themes of identity, existence, and feminism. She is regarded as one of the most important figures in Brazilian literature and a pioneering voice in 20th-century fiction. Here are 49 of her quotes:

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

Clarice Lispector

I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?

Clarice Lispector

Brazil is where I have to be, where I have my roots.

Clarice Lispector

Facts and particulars annoy me.

Clarice Lispector

Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.

Clarice Lispector

Perhaps I have not been made for the pure, expansive waters, but for those which are small and readily accesible. And perhaps my craving for another source, which gives me the expression of someone in search of food, perhaps this craving is a whim - and nothing more. Yet surely those rare moments of self-confidence, of blind existence, of happiness as intense and serene as an organ playing - surely those moments prove that I am capable of fulfilling my quest and that this longing which consumes my whole being is not merely some whim? Moreover, that whim is the truth!

Clarice Lispector

She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed.

Clarice Lispector

Everything in 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 prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.

Clarice Lispector

Was that, then, the way we do things? "Not knowing"- was that the way the most profound things happened? ... Was the secret of never escaping from the greater life the secret of living like a sleepwalker?

Clarice Lispector

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.

Clarice Lispector

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.

Clarice Lispector

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

Clarice Lispector

The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

Clarice Lispector

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.

Clarice Lispector

And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn't have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury.

Clarice Lispector

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.

Clarice Lispector

I, who called love my hope for love.

Clarice Lispector

For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes.

Clarice Lispector

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

Clarice Lispector

Living leaves me atremble.

Clarice Lispector

I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

Clarice Lispector