I want to know, what will that matter after I die? (Well, the main value it has is that your name will remain in Brazilian literature.) CL: You think… - Clarice Lispector

He was sad and tall. He never spoke to me without making it understood that his gravest flaw lay in his tendency toward destruction. And that was why, he'd say, stroking his black hair as if stroking the soft, hot fur of a kitten, that was why his life amounted to a pile of shards: some shiny, others clouded, some cheerful, others like a "piece of a wasted hour," meaningless, some red and full, others white, but already shattered. (beginning of "História interrompida")

Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet. (p61)

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")