The Passion According to G.H.

by Clarice Lispector

I am the silence engraved on a wall, and the oldest butterfly flutters and finds me: the same as always. From birth to death is when I call myself human, and shall never actually die. But that isn’t eternity, it’s damnation.

(Nostalgia is not for the God we are missing, it is the nostalgia for ourselves who are not enough; we miss our impossible grandeur — my unreachable present is my paradise lost.)

The revelation of love is a revelation of neediness — blessed be the poor in spirit for theirs is the lacerating kingdom of life.

Since being real is owning up to the promise itself: owning up to one’s own innocence and retaking the taste of which one was never aware: the taste of the living.

I myself prefer to consider that I have temporarily taken leave of my senses, rather than having the courage to think that all of this is a truth.