Literary Birthday – 10 December – Clarice Lispector

Clarice Lispector was born 10 December 1920, and died 9 December 1977

10 Quotes

1. So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.
2. My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognisable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.
3. No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.
4. I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.
5. Putting my hand in someone else’s has always been my definition of happiness. Before I fall asleep, often – in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and go into the greater world – often, before I get up the courage to go into the vastness of sleep, I pretend that someone has my hand in theirs.
6. I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.
7. How was she to tie herself to a man without permitting him to imprison her? And was there some means of acquiring things without those things possessing her?
8. Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?
9. The world’s continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.
10. I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

Clarice Lispector was a Brazilian writer. She has been recognised internationally for her innovative novels and short stories, which include Near to the Wild Heart, The Hour of the Star, and Family Ties. She is often described as the most important Jewish writer since Franz Kafka.

Source for Image

by Amanda Patterson

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