Clarice Lispector

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.

Clarice 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.

Quotes

• At first she dreamed of sheep, of going to school, of cats drinking milk. Little by little she dreamed of blue sheep, of going to school in the middle of the woods, of cats drinking milk from golden saucers. And her dreams became increasingly dense and acquired colours that were difficult to dilute into words.
  • Near to the Wild Heart (1943), p. 43

• Perhaps I have not been made for the pure, expansive waters, but for those which are small and readily accesible. And perhaps my craving for another source, which gives me the expression of someone in search of food, perhaps this craving is a whim - and nothing more. Yet surely those rare moments of self-confidence, of blind existence, of happiness as intense and serene as an organ playing - surely those moments prove that I am capable of fulfilling my quest and that this longing which consumes my whole being is not merely some whim? Moreover, that whim is the truth!
  • Near to the Wild Heart (1943), p. 65

• I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.
  • The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 5

• Was that, then, the way we do things? "Not knowing"— was that the way the most profound things happened? ... Was the secret of never escaping from the greater life the secret of living like a sleepwalker?
  • The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 159

• Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.
  • The Passion According to G.H. (1964), p. 169

• 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.
  • An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Delights (1968)

• There it is, the sea, the most incomprehensible of non-human existences.
  • An Apprenticeship, or The Book of Delights (1968)

• Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I do not know why, but I do know that the universe never began.
  • The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11

• I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
  • The Hour of the Star (1977), p. 11

• My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.
  • The Hour of the Star (1977)

• Who hasn't asked oneself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?
  • The Hour of the Star (1977)