The Complete Stories Quotes

“She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Once in a while, groundless melancholy would darken my face, a dull and incomprehensible nostalgia for times never experienced would invade me.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“How living hurt. Living was an open wound.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Every day it will be the same thing: at dusk I begin to feel melancholy and pensive.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Listen up, pal, the moon is way up in the sky. Aren’t you scared? The helplessness that comes from nature. That moonlight, think about it, that moonlight, paler than a corpse’s face, so silent and far away, that moonlight witnessed the cries of the first monsters to walk the earth, surveyed the peaceful waters after the deluges and the floods, illuminated centuries of nights and went out at dawns throughout centuries . . . Think about it, my friend, that moonlight will be the same tranquil ghost when the last traces of your great-grandsons’ grandsons no longer exist. Prostrate yourself before it. You’ve shown up for an instant and it is forever. Don’t you suffer, pal? I . . . I myself can’t stand it. It hits me right here, in the center of my heart, having to die one day and, thousands of centuries later, undistinguished in humus, eyeless for all eternity, I, I!, for all eternity . . . and the indifferent, triumphant moon, its pale hands outstretched over new men, new things, different beings. And I Dead! Think about it, my friend. It’s shining over the cemetery right now. The cemetery, where all lie sleeping who once were and never more shall be. There, where the slightest whisper makes the living shudder in terror and where the tranquility of the stars muffles our cries and brings terror to our eyes. There, where there are neither tears nor thoughts to express the profound misery of coming to an end.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Love? I wanted to go with him, to be on the stronger side, for him to spare me, like one who seeks shelter in the arms of the enemy to stay far from his arrows. It was different than love, I was finding out: I wanted him as a thirsty person desires water, without feelings, without even wanting to be happy.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“The courage to be something other than what one is, to give birth to oneself, and to leave one’s former body on the ground. And without having answered to anyone about whether it was worthwhile.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“I am so lost. But that is exactly how we live; lost in time and space.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“There are truths I haven’t even told God. And not even myself. I am a secret under the lock of seven keys.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“I, just from having felt affection, thought that loving is easy.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“I want shade, I want shade and anonymity.
from "The Departure”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Her brown eyes were untranslatable…She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Hers is an art that makes us want to know the woman; she is a woman who makes us want to know her art.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Sometimes she didn't think. Sometimes a person sat there being. She didn't have to do. Being was already doing. You could be slowly or a bit fast.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Here I am ready for life! Dear sirs, no one's looking at me, no one realises I exist! Yet, dear sirs, I exist, I swear that I exist! Very much, even. Look, all of you, with that triumphant attitude, look: I can vibrate, vibrate like the taunt of a harp. I can suffer with more intensity than any of you, gentleman. I am superior. And do you know why? Because I know I exist!”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Criava as mais falsas dificuldades para aquela coisa clandestina que era a felicidade. A felicidade sempre iria ser clandestina para mim. Parece que eu já pressentia.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“She had pacified life so well, taken such care for it not to explode. She had kept it all in serene comprehension, separated each person from the rest, clothes were clearly made to be worn and you could choose the evening movie from the newspaper—everything wrought in such a way that one day followed another.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Her courage came from not knowing herself, but going ahead nevertheless. Not knowing yourself is inevitable, and not knowing yourself demands courage.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Twelve years weigh on a person like pounds of lead. The days melt into one another, merge to form one whole block, a big anchor. And the person is lost.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“She clutched him tightly, in alarm. She protected herself trembling. Because life was in peril. She loved the world, loved what had been created - she loved with nausea.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“That night I'd already had quite a bit to drink. I wandered from bar to bar, until, excessively happy, I was afraid I'd outdo myself: I'd grown too comfortable in my own skin. I was looking for a way to pour some of myself out, before I completely overflowed”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“And even so, I had discovered, I was afraid to free myself. “That” had grown too much inside me, leaving me full. I’d be helpless if I were ever cured. After all, what was I now, I felt, but a reflection? Were I to eradicate Daniel, I’d be a blank mirror.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Then, born again from her womb, it rose again, beseeching in a swelling wave, that urge to kill.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“She was sitting there in her little housedress. He knew she'd done what she could to avoid becoming luminous and unattainable. Timidly and with respect, he was looking at her. He'd grown older, weary, curious. But he didn't have a single word to say. From the open doorway he saw his wife on the sofa without leaning back, once again alert and tranquil, as if on a train. That had already departed.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“[...] I was permanently busy wanting and not wanting to be what I was, I couldn’t decide which me, every me was impossible; having been born meant being full of mistakes to correct. No, it wasn’t to annoy the teacher that I didn’t study; all I had time for was growing up. Which I was doing all over, with an awkwardness that seemed more the result of a mathematical error: my legs didn’t go with my eyes, and my mouth was emotional while my fidgety hands would get dirty - in my haste I was growing up without knowing in what direction. The fact that a picture from that time shows me, to the contrary, to be a well-grounded girl, wild and gentle, with thoughtful eyes beneath thick bangs, this real picture doesn’t contradict me, all it does is reveal ghostly stranger that I wouldn't understand even if I were her mother. Only much later, after having settled into my body and feeling fundamentally more assured, could I venture out and study a bit; previously, however, I couldn’t risk learning, I didn’t want to disrupt myself - I was intuitively careful with what I was, since I didn’t know what I was, and I vainly cultivated the integrity of innocence.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Luísa remains motionless, sprawled atop the tangled sheets, her hair spread out on the pillow. An arm here, another there, crucified by lassitude.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“I realize now that it was a certain apathy, rather than peace, that turned my acts and my desires to ash.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“This is a record of woman’s entire life, written over a woman’s entire life. As such, it seems to be the first such total record written in any country. This sweeping claim requires qualifications. A wife and a mother; a bourgeois, Western, heterosexual woman’s life. A woman who was not interrupted: a woman who did not start writing late, or stop for marriage or children, or succumb to drugs or suicide. A woman who, like so many male writers, began in her teens and carried on to the end. A woman who, in demographic respects, was exactly like most of her readers. Their”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“Mama, before she got married, according to Aunt Emilia, was a firecracker, a tempestuous redhead, with thoughts of her own about liberty and equality for women. But then along came Papa, very serious and tall, with thoughts of his own too, about... liberty and equality for women. The trouble was in the coinciding subject matter. There was a collision. And nowadays Mama sews and embroiders and sings at the piano and makes little cakes on Saturdays, all like clockwork and cheerfully, She has ideas of her own, still, but they all come down to one: a wife should always go along with her husband, as the accessory goes along with the principal (my analogy, the result of Law School classes).”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories

“An egg is a thing that must be careful. That's why the chicken is the egg's disguise. The chicken exists so that the egg can traverse the ages. That's what a mother is for.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Complete Stories