Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My v… - Clarice Lispector

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Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go to seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought, but I was and am fatefully impelled to have to know what thought thinks. Reality precedes the voice that seeks it, but like the earth precedes the tree, but like the world precedes the man, but like the sea precedes the view of the sea, life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence. (p169)

Clarice Lispector

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About Clarice Lispector

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.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Helen Palmer • Teresa Quadros • Хая Пинхасiвна Лиспектор

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Virginia Woolf Louise Erdrich Isabel Allende Anaïs Nin Vladimir Nabokov

Additional quotes by Clarice Lispector

I was born in Ukraine, but already fleeing. My parents stopped in a village that’s not even on the map, called Chechelnik, for me to be born, and came to Brazil, where I arrived when I was two months old. So calling me a foreigner is nonsense. I’m more Brazilian than Russian, obviously.

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.

I don’t write as a catharsis, to get something off my chest. I never got anything off my chest in a book. That’s what friends are for. I want the thing itself.

Oh, but to reach silence, what a huge effort of voice. My voice is the way I go to seek reality; reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkabl… - Clarice Lispector

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