An Apprenticeship Clarice Lispector Quotes

There could only be a meeting of their mysteries if one surrendered to the other: the surrender of two unknowable worlds done with the trust with which two understandings might surrender to each other.

Ah how much easier to to bear and understand pain than that promise of spring’s frigid and liquid joy. And with such modesty she was awaiting it: the poignancy of goodness.

- My mystery is simple: I don't know how to be alive. - Because you only know, or only knew, how to be alive through pain.

But she didn't fear the moon because she was more lunar than solar and could see with wide-open eyes in the dark dawns the sinister moon in the sky. So she bathed all over in the lunar rays, as there are others who sunbathed. And was becoming profoundly limpid.

life isn’t a joke because in the middle of the day you die. A human being’s most pressing need was to become a human being.

one of the things I’ve learned is that we ought to live despite.

Could love be giving your own solitude to another? Because that's the ultimate thing you can give of yourself.

Meu mistério é simples: eu não sei como estar viva.

The night that wouldn't, and wouldn't, and wouldn't come, that was impossible. And her love that now was impossible—that was dry the way the fever of someone who doesn't sweat was love without opium or morphine. And "I love you" was a splinter you couldn't remove with tweezers. A splinter buried in the toughest part of the sole of your foot.

The last lights were undulating on the standing green water of the pool. Discovering the sublime in the trivial, the invisible underneath the tangible—she herself completely disarmed as if in that instant she'd learned that her ability to uncover the secrets of natural life was still intact. And also disarmed by the slight anguish that came to her when she felt she could uncover other secrets too, perhaps a mortal secret. But she knew she was ambitious: she'd scorn easy success and want, though she was afraid, to rise higher and higher or descend lower and lower.

She wanted the best oils and perfumes, wanted the best kind of life, wanted the most tender hopes, wanted the best delicate meats and also the heaviest ones to eat, wanted her flesh to break into spirt and her spirit to break into flesh, wanted those fine mixtures— everything that would secretly ready her for those first moments that would come.

I’m an insurmountable mountain along my own path. But sometimes through a word of yours or a word I read, suddenly everything becomes clear.

And Lóri thought that might be one of the most important human and animal experiences: asking mutely for help and mutely that help being given.

Humility in living isn’t my strong point. But when I write I’m fated to be humble. Though within limits. Because the day I lose my own importance inside me — all will be lost.

The heart must present itself alone to the Nothing and alone beat out in silence its palpitations in the shadows. You only sense your own heart in your ears. When it presents itself completely naked, it’s not even communication, it’s submission. For we were only made for the little silence, not for the silence of the stars.

It’s because I don’t want to be platonic in relation to myself. I’m profoundly defeated by the world I live in. I separated myself just for a while because of my defeat and because I felt that other people were defeated too. So I closed myself up in an individualization that if I hadn’t been careful could have been transformed into a hysterical or contemplative solitude.

She’d thought: “Christ was Christ for others, but who? Who was a Christ for Christ?” He’d had to go directly to the God. And she, as she sat in the pew, had also wanted to be able to go directly to the Omnipotence, without having to go through Christ’s human condition which was also hers and everyone else’s. And, oh, God, not wanting to go to Him through the merciful condition of Christ might once again be nothing more than the fear of loving.

What can I do with happiness? What can I do with this strange and piercing peace, which is already starting to hurt me like an anguish, like a great silence of spaces? To whom can I give my happiness, which is already starting to scratch me a bit and scares me. No, I don’t want to be happy. I prefer mediocrity. Ah, thousands of people don’t have the nerve to linger a while longer in this unknown thing which is feeling happy and they prefer mediocrity.

No, no, she wasn’t lost, she was even going to make a list of things she could do! She sat with a blank page and wrote: eat — look at fruit in the market — see people’s faces — feel love — feel hate — have something not known and feel an unbearable suffering — wait impatiently for the beloved — sea — go into the sea — buy a new swimsuit — make coffee — look at objects — listen to music — holding hands — irritation — be right — not be right and give in to someone who is — be forgiven for the vanity of living — be a woman — do myself credit — laugh at the absurdity of my condition — have no choice — have a choice — fall asleep — but of bodily love I shall not speak.

Lori se perfumaba y ésa era una de sus imitaciones del mundo, ella quetanto buscaba aprender de la vida— con el perfume, de algún modo intensificaba cualquier cosa que ella fuese y por eso no podía usar perfumes que la contradecían: perfumarse era una sabiduría instintiva, adquirida hacía milenios por mujeres que aprendían aparentemente pasivas, y, como todo arte, exigía que ella tuviera un mínimo de conocimiento de sí misma.

E digo: eu está apaixonada pelo teu eu. Então nós é.

A mais premente necessidade de um ser humano era tornar-se um ser humano.

Ambos sabiam que esse era um grande passo dado na aprendizagem. E não havia perigo de gastar este sentimento com medo de perdê-lo, porque ser era infinito, de um infinito de ondas do mar. Eu estou sendo, dizia a árvore do jardim. Eu estou sendo, disse o garçom que se aproximou. Eu estou sendo, disse a água verde na piscina. Eu estou sendo, disse o mar azul do Mediterrâneo. Eu estou sendo, disse o nosso mar verde e traiçoeiro. Eu estou sendo, disse a aranha e imobilizou a presa com o seu veneno. Eu estou sendo, disse uma criança que escorregara nos ladrilhos do chão e gritara assustada: mamãe! Eu estou sendo, disse a mãe que tinha um filho que escorregava nos ladrilhos que circundavam a piscina.

Ah "persona", como não te usar e ser!

A solução para esse absurdo que se chama "eu existo", a solução é amar um outro ser que, este, nós compreendemos que exista.

[...] we musn't forget and should respect the violence inside us. Small acts of violence save us from greater ones. Maybe, if we didn't eat animals, maybe we'd eat people in their own blood. Our life is cruel, Loreley: we're born with blood and with blood the possibility of perfect union is cut forever: the umbilical cord. And many are they who die from blood spilled inside or out. We must believe in blood as an important part of life. Cruelty is love too.

She enters. The very salty water is so cold that it gives her gooseflesh and mounts a ritual of attack on her legs.[...] And now she's alert, even without thinking, as a fisherman is alert without thinking. The woman in now a compact and a light and a sharp one- and heads through the iciness that, liquid resist her, and yet lets her enter, as in love where resistance can be a secret request.

She was falling into a sadness without pain. It wasn't bad. It was part of life certainly. The next day she would probaly have some joy, also without the great ecstasies, just a little joy, and that wasn't bad either.

Lóri was feeling as if she were a dangerous tiger with an arrow buried in its flesh, and which had been circling slowly around frightened people to see who would take away its pain. And then a man, Ulisses, had felt that a wounded tiger isn’t dangerous. And approaching the beast, unafraid to touch her, he had carefully pulled out the buried arrow.

And the tiger? No, neither people nor animals can say thank you for certain things. So she, the tiger, had paced languorously in front of the man, hesitated, licked one of her paws and then, since neither a word or a grunt was what mattered, gone off in silence. Lóri would never forget the help she’d received when she could only manage to stammer with fear.

And what can I do? What can I do with happiness? What can I do with this strange and piercing peace, which is already starting to hurt me like an anguish, like a great silence of spaces? To whom can I give my happiness, which is already starting to scratch me a bit and scares me. No, I don’t want to be happy. I prefer mediocrity.

Oh God! Having just one life was so little.

it's only when we forget all our knowledge that we begin to know

Lori is alone. The salty sea is not alone because it's salty and big, and that's an achievement of Nature. Lori's courage is that not knowing herself, she still presses on, and acting without knowing yourself demands courage.

we can waste some time without wasting our whole lives.

As Lispector writes, “not-understanding” would always be better than “understanding,” for not-understanding “had no frontiers and led to the infinite, to the God.” Lóri, Ulisses, we, Clarice, remain apprentices, always — apprentices in everything — because apprentices feel more, think more, struggle more, and win more than the master, who has already arrived, ever can.

A right to be possessed her, as if she’d just finished crying after being born. How? How to stretch birth out for a whole lifetime?

...and she was longing for him for exactly because he seemed to her like the border between the past and whatever wants to come—whatever would come?

The heart must present itself alone to the Nothing and alone beat out in silence its palpitations in the shadows. You only sense your own heart in your ears.

Remembering that day, which she saw again, she thought that from now on this was all she wanted from the God: to rest her chest on him, and not say a word.

…she wanted [her pupils] to know, through their Portuguese class, that the taste of a fruit is in the contact of the fruit with the palate and not in the fruit itself.

She was falling into a sadness without pain. It wasn't bad.

She herself had to be her own guardian. And she now had a responsibility to be herself. In this world of choices, she seemed to have chosen.

Well, she sighed, even if it wasn't reaching me clearly, at least she knew that there was a secret meaning to the things of life. So it was she knew that she occasionally, even if somewhat confusedly, ended up sensing perfection—

then from the very womb, like a distant quivering in the earth that hardly knew itself to be a sign of the earthquake, from the uterus, from the tensed heart came the gigantic tremor of a powerful, shaking pain, from the whole body a shaking — and with subtle grimaces of face and of body at last with the difficulty of an oil ripping open the ground — came at last the great dry sob, a wordless sob without any sound even for herself, the one she hadn’t suspected, the one she’d never wanted and hadn’t foreseen — rattled like the strong tree that is more deeply shaken than the fragile tree — at last pipes and veins were burst, then

From Ulisses she'd learned to have the courage to have faith--lots of courage, faith in what? In faith itself, since faith can be a real scare, it can mean falling into the abyss, Lori was afraid of falling into the abyssand was holding on to one of Ulisses's hands while Ulisses's other hand was pushing her into the abyss--soon she'd have to let go of the hand that was weaker than the one pushing her, and fall, life isn't a joke because in the middle of the day youd die. A human being's most pressing need was to become a human being.

--My mystery is simple: I don't know how to be alive through pain. --That's right. --And don't you know how to be alive through pleasure? --I almost do. That's what I was trying to tell you.

Lori used her father's allowance to buy a thick woolen sweather for every pupil in her class, and all were red to heat up their view as well as to stop their lips going purple from the cold [...] And it was raining a lot that winter. So she used another allowance from her father and looked for -what pleasure to wander through the shops looking until she found- and looked for and bought red umbrellas and red woolen socks for all her boys and girls. That was how she was setting the world on fire.