The Hour of the Star

by Clarice Lispector

All 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 don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.

Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

And I want to accept my freedom without thinking what so many do, that existing is something for fools, a case of madness. Because that’s what it seems like. Existing isn’t logical.

Who was she asking? God? She didn’t think about God, God didn’t think about her. God belongs to those who manage to get him. God appears when you’re distracted.

She thought she’d incur serious punishment and even risk dying if she took too much pleasure in life. So she protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she’d never run out. This savings gave her a little security since you can’t fall farther than the ground.

She knew what desire was — though she didn’t know she knew. It was like this: she was starving but not for food, it was a kind of painful taste that rose from the pit of her stomach and made her nipples quiver and her arms empty without an embrace.

we have known since Moses that the word is divine.

She felt inside her a hope more violent than any despair she had ever felt.

(But who am I to rebuke the guilty? The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don’t love the criminal who kills us. But I’m not sure of myself: I have to ask, though I don’t know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all costs and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that’s the way it is, so be it.)