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161 " —————— I’m searching, I’m searching. I’m trying to understand. Trying to give what I’ve lived to somebody else and I don’t know to whom, but I don’t want to keep what I lived. I don’t know what to do with what I lived, I’m afraid of that profound disorder. I don’t trust what happened to me. Did something happen to me that I, because I didn’t know how to live it, lived as something else? That’s what I’d like to call disorganization, and I’d have the confidence to venture on, because I would know where to return afterward: to the previous organization. I’d rather call it disorganization because I don’t want to confirm myself in what I lived — in the confirmation of me I would lose the world as I had it, and I know I don’t have the fortitude for another. "
― Clarice Lispector , The Passion According to G.H.
162 " What am I in this instant? I’m a typewriter making the dry echo in the dark, humid dawn. I haven’t been human for a long time. They wanted me to be an object. I am an object. An object dirty with blood. An object that creates other objects and the machine creates us all. It makes demands. Mechanisms make endless demands on my life. But I don’t totally obey: if I have to be an object, let me be an object that screams. There’s something inside of me that hurts. Oh, how it hurts and how it screams for help. But tears aren’t there in the machine that is me. I’m an object without a destiny. I’m an object in whose hands? such is my human destiny. What saves me is the scream. I protest in the name of what’s inside the object behind the behind of the thought-feeling. I’m an urgent object. "
― Clarice Lispector , Água Viva
163 " Escrevo por não ter nada a fazer no mundo: sobrei e não há lugar para mim na terra dos homens. Escrevo porque sou um desesperado e estou cansado, não suporto mais a rotina de me ser e se não fosse a sempre novidade que é escrever, eu me morreria simbolicamente todos os dias. (A hora da estrela) "
― Clarice Lispector
164 " I write very simple and very naked. That's why it wounds. I'm a grey and blue landscape. I rise in a dry fountain and in the cold light. "
― Clarice Lispector , A Breath of Life
165 " Ser feliz é uma responsabilidade muito grande. Pouca gente tem coragem. Tenho coragem mas com um pouco de medo. Pessoa feliz é quem aceitou a morte. Quando estou feliz demais, sinto uma angústia amordaçante: assusto-me. "
166 " And even sadness was also something for rich people, for people who could afford it, for people who didn’t have anything better to do. Sadness was a luxury. "
― Clarice Lispector , The Hour of the Star
167 " I will surpass myself in waves, ah, Lord, and may everything come and fall upon me, even the incomprehension of myself at certain white moments because all I have to do is comply with myself and then nothing will block my path until death-without-fear, from any struggle or rest I will rise up as strong and beautiful as a young horse. "
― Clarice Lispector , Near to the Wild Heart
168 " … everything is so fragile. I feel so lost. I live off secret, radiating, luminous rays that would smother me if I didn’t cover them with a heavy cloak of false certainties. God help me: I have no one to guide me and it’s dark again. "
169 " To know when to quit. Whether to give up--this is often the question facing the gambler. No one is taught the art of walking away. And the anguish of deciding if I should keep playing is hardly unusual. Will I be able to quit honorably? or am I the type who waits stubbornly for something to happen? something like, for instance, the end of the world? or whatever it might be, maybe my own sudden death, in which case my decision to give up would be beside the point. "
170 " Depersonalization like the deposing of useless individuality— the loss of everything that can be lost, while still being. To take away from yourself little by little, with an effort so attentive that no pain is felt, to take away from yourself like one who gets free of her own skim, her own characteristics. Everything that characterizes me is just the way I am most easily viewed by others and end up being superficially recognizable to myself. "
171 " To eat communion bread will be to taste the world's indifference, and to immerse myself in nothingness. "
172 " Meanwhile, the clouds are white and the sky is blue. Why is there so much God? At the expense of men. "
173 " Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession. "
174 " Obsessed with the desire to be happy I lost my life. I moved with the tension of a bow and arrow in an unreality of desires. "
175 " Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet. "
176 " I write because I have nothing better to do in this world: I am superfluous and last in the world of men. I write because I am desperate and weary. I can no longer bear the routine of my existence and, were it not for the constant novelty of writing, I should die symbolically each day. "
177 " I cannot stand repetition: routine divides me from potential novelties within my reach. "
178 " 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
179 " [...] E é porque sempre fui de brigar muito, meu modo é brigando. É porque sempre tento chegar do meu modo. É porque ainda não sei ceder. [...] É porque ainda não sou eu mesma, e então o castigo é amar um mundo que não é ele. É também porque eu me ofendo à toa. É porque talvez eu precise que me digam com brutalidade, pois sou muito teimosa. [...] Talvez eu tenha que chamar de "mundo" esse meu modo de ser um pouco de tudo. "
― Clarice Lispector , Felicidade Clandestina
180 " What I’m writing to you is not for reading— it’s for being. "