Quotes by "Clarice Lispector"

It's with such profound happiness. Such a hallelujah. Hallelujah, I shout, hallelujah merging with the darkest human howl of the pain of separation but a shout of diabolic joy. Because no one can hold me back now. I can still reason - I studied mathematics, which is the madness of reason - but now I want the plasma - I want to eat straight from the placenta. I am a little scared: scared of surrendering completely because the next instant is unknown. The next instant, do I make it? or does it make itself? We make it together with our breath. And with the flair of the bullfighter in the ring.

Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much God. Why not a little for men.

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

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

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

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.

Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.

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.

The future, at least, had the advantage of not being the present, and the worse can always take a turn for the better... For, strange though it may seem, she had faith. Composed of fine organic matter, she existed. Pure and simple.

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.