Clarice Lispector

Brazil
10 Dec 1920 // 9 Dec 1977
Writer

Quotes

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I've always liked putting things in their places. I think it's my only true calling. By ordering things I create and understand at the same time... Ordering is finding the best form.

The Passion According to G.H.
If I raised the alarm at being alive, voiceless and hard they would drag me away since they drag away those who depart the possible world, the exceptional being is dragged away, the screaming being.

The Passion According to G.H.
I, who called love my hope for love.

The Passion According to G.H.
Would it be simplistic to think the moral problem with regards to others consists in behaving as one ought to, and the moral problem with regards to oneself is managing to feel what one ought to?

The Passion According to G.H.
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.
In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

The Passion According to G.H.
"I" is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

The Passion According to G.H.
What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.

The Passion According to G.H.
The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

The Passion According to G.H.
And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.

The Passion According to G.H.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays