I only use reason as an anesthetic. But for life I’m a perennial promise of understanding my submerged world. Now that there are computers for almost… - Clarice Lispector

...jealousy, it was jealousy, the cold hand mashing her slowly, squeezing her, diminishing her soul. (p135)

To Potential Readers: This is a book just like any other book. But I would be happy if it were read only by people whose outlook is fully formed. People who know that an approach-to anything whatsoever-must be carried out gradually and laboriously, that it must traverse even the very opposite of what is being approached. They and they alone will, slowly, come to understand that this book exacts nothing of anyone. Over time, the character G. H. came to give me, for example, a very difficult pleasure; but it is called pleasure.

It is not easy to remember how and why I wrote a story or a novel. Once they detach from me, I too find them unfamiliar. It's not a "trance," but the concentration during the writing seems to take away the awareness of whatever isn't writing itself.