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Clarice Lispector

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“Nosotros, los que escribimos, tenemos en la palabra humana, escrita o hablada, grandes misterios, que no quiero develar con mi raciocinio que es frío. Tengo que evitar indagar en el misterio para no traicionar el milagro. El que escribe o pinta o diseña o baila o hace cálculos de matemática hace milagros todos los días. Es una gran aventura y exige mucho valor y devoción y mucha humildad. Mi fuerte no es la humildad en vivir. Pero al escribir soy fatalmente humilde. Aunque con limitaciones. Pues el día que pierda dentro de mí mi propia importancia -todo estará perdido.”

“Minha pequena cabeça tão limitada estala ao pensar em alguma coisa que não começa e não termina - porque assim é o eterno. Felizmente esse sentimento dura pouco porque eu não aguento que demore e se desvanecesse levaria ao desvario. Mas a cabeça também estala ao imaginar o contrário: alguma coisa que tivesse começado - pois onde começaria? E que terminasse - mas o que viria depois de terminar?”

“Apareció entonces un hombre delgado de chaleco pulido tocando el violín en la esquina. Debo explicar que a este hombre lo vi una vez al anochecer cuando yo era niño en Recife y el sonido extenuado y agudo subrayaba con una línea dorada el misterio de la calle oscura. Junto al hombre escuálido había una latita de zinc donde hacían un ruido seco las monedas de los que oían con gratitud porque él les sollozaba la vida. Sólo ahora entiendo y sólo ahora brotó en mí el sentido secreto: el violín es un aviso. Sé que cuando yo muera voy a oír el violín del hombre y pediré música, música, música.”

“She felt like a dry branch, sticking out of the air. Brittle, covered in old bark. Maybe she was thirsty, but there was no water nearby. And above all the suffocating certainty that if a man were to embrace her at that moment she would feel not a soft sweetness in her nerves, but lime juice stinging them, her body like wood near fire, warped, crackling, dry.”

“What else was that feeling of contained force, ready to burst forth in violence, that longing to apply it with her eyes closed, all of it, with the rash confidence of a wild beast? Wasn’t it in evil alone that you could breathe fearlessly, accepting the air and your lungs? Not even pleasure would give me as much pleasure as evil, she thought surprised. She felt a perfect animal inside her, full of contradictions, of selfishness and vitality.”

“The struggle to reach reality—that’s the main objective of this creature who tries, in every way, to cling to whatever exists by means of a total vision of things. I meant to make clear too the way vision—the way of seeing, the viewpoint—alters reality, constructing it. A house is not only constructed with stones, cement etc. A man’s way of looking constructs it too.”

“A very sweet light is spreading over the Earth like a perfume. The moon is slowly dissolving and a boy-sun languidly stretches his translucent arms ... Cool murmurings of pure waters that surrender themselves to the hillsides. A pair of wings dances in the rosy atmosphere. Silence, my friends. The day is about to begin.”

“Ignorance of the law of irreducibility was no excuse. I could no longer excuse myself with the claim that I didn't know the law -- for knowledge of self and of the world is the law that, even though unattainable, cannot be broken, and no one can excuse himself by saying that he doesn't know it. . . . The renewed originality of the sin is this: I have to carry out my unknowing, I shall be sinning originally against life.”

“I have grown weary of literature: silence alone comforts me. If I continue to write, it’s because I have nothing more to accomplish in this world except to wait for death. Searching for the word in darkness. Any little success invades me and puts me in full view of everyone. I long to wallow in the mud. I can scarcely control my need for self-abasement, my craving for licentiousness and debauchery. Sin tempts me, forbidden pleasures lure me. I want to be both pig and hen, then kill them and drink their blood.”