Clarice Lispector Quotes

Ukrainian-Brazilian writer, poet, and journalist (1920–1977)

Clarice Lispector (born Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector; December 10, 1920 – December 9, 1977) was a Brazilian writer. Acclaimed internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, she was also a journalist and a translator. A legendary figure in Brazil, renowned for her uncommon and unique writing style, her great personal beauty — the American translator Gregory Rabassa recalled being "flabbergasted to meet that rare person who looked like Marlene Dietrich and wrote like Virginia Woolf," — and her eccentric personality.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Pen Names: Helen Palmer • Terelu

Alternative Names: Teresa Quadros • Хая Пинхасiвна Лиспектор

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I wasn't actually distracted, my guard was just down, I was being something quite rare: free. (from "Perdoando Deus")

...when the celebration was fast approaching, what could explain the inner tumult that came over me? As if the budding world were finally opening into a big scarlet rose. (from "Restos do Carnaval")

There was beauty in that body that was neither ugly nor pretty, in that face in which a sweetness eager for greater sweetnesses was its sign of life. (from "A criada")

There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.

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.

it's only when we forget all our knowledge that we begin to know

I’m an insurmountable mountain along my own path. But sometimes through a word of yours or a word I read, suddenly everything becomes clear.

Could love be giving your own solitude to another? Because that's the ultimate thing you can give of yourself.

Oh God! Having just one life was so little.

Remembering that day, which she saw again, she thought that from now on this was all she wanted from the God: to rest her chest on him, and not say a word.

Humility in living isn’t my strong point. But when I write I’m fated to be humble. Though within limits. Because the day I lose my own importance inside me — all will be lost.

we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.

There could only be a meeting of their mysteries if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds done with the trust with which two understandings might surrender to each other.

Ah how much easier to to bear and understand pain than that promise of spring’s frigid and liquid joy. And with such modesty she was awaiting it: the poignancy of goodness.

…the greatest obstacle to my progress is me. I myself have been the biggest difficulty in my path. It’s with enormous effort that I’m able to overcome myself.