Clarice Quotes

Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

I want the following word: splendor, splendor is fruit in all its succulence, fruit without sadness. I want vast distances. My savage intuition of myself.

Everything in the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born.

So long as I have questions to which there are no answers, I shall go on writing.

I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort

The world's continual breathing is what we hear and call silence.

Things were somehow so good that they were in danger of becoming very bad because what is fully mature is very close to rotting

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

O que não sei dizer é mais importante do que o que eu digo.

Haber nacido me ha estropeado la salud.

And I want to be held down. I don't know what to do with the horrifying freedom that can destroy me.

Do you ever suddenly find it strange to be yourself?

I write and that way rid myself of me and then at last I can rest.

What does he do, Clarice? What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. How do we begin to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day.

And it's inside myself that I must create someone who will understand.

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.

Do not mourn the dead. They know what they are doing.

Hello Clarice...

It is because I dove into the abyss that I am beginning to love the abyss I am made of.

She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed

Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.

You don't understand music: you hear it. So hear me with your whole body.

I've never been free in my whole life. Inside I've always chased myself. I've become intolerable to myself. I live in a lacerating duality. I'm seemingly free, but I'm a prisoner inside of me.

But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.

Good-bye Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?" "Yes." Pembry was taking her arm. It was go or fight him. "Yes," she said. "I'll tell you." "Do you promise?""Yes.

Who hasn't asked himself, am I a monster or is this what it means to be human?

No it is not easy to write. It is as hard as breaking rocks. Sparks and splinters fly like shattered steel.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.

I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice.

Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

Gratitude’s got a short half-life, Clarice.

Por te falar eu te assustarei e te perderei? mas se eu não falar eu me perderei, e por me perder eu te perderia.

But don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.

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?

What I want is to live of that initial and primordial something that was what made some things reach the point of aspiring to be human.

I do not know much. But there are certain advantages in not knowing. Like virgin territory, the mind is free of preconceptions. Everything I do not know forms the greater part of me: This is my largesse. And with this I understand everything. The things I do not know constitute my truth.

Queria saber: Depois que se é feliz, o que acontece? O que vem depois?

I am only true when I’m alone.

Love is now, is always. All that is missing is the coup de grâce- which is called passion.

Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" | "She believed in angels, and, because she believed, they existed

I work only with lost and founds.

But I welcome the darkness where the two eyes of that soft panther glow. The darkness is my cultural broth. The enchanted darkness. I go on speaking to you, risking disconnection: I’m subterraneously unattainable because of what I know.

I ask myself: is every story that has ever been written in this world, a story of suffering and affliction?

Oh, living is so uncomfortable. Everything presses in: the body demands, the spirit never ceases, living is like being weary but being unable to sleep–living is upsetting. You can’t walk around naked, either in body or in spirit.

The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.

Where does music go when it’s not playing?—she asked herself. And disarmed she would answer: May they make a harp out of my nerves when I die.

Never suffer because you don't have an opinion on this or that topic. Never suffer because you are not something or because you are.

To think is an act. To feel is a fact.

And your dinner for the orchestra officials." "Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?

For one has the right to shout. So, I am shouting.

They gave me a name and alienated me from myself.

Holding someone's hand was always my idea of joy. Often before falling asleep - in that small struggle not to lose consciousness and enter the greater world - often, before having the courage to go toward the greatness of sleep, I pretend that someone is holding my hand and I go, go toward the enormous absence of form that is sleep. And when even then I can't find the courage, then I dream.

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.

It occurred to Dr. Lecter in the moment that with all his knowledge and intrusion, he could never entirely predict her, or own her at all. He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him. He wondered if she had the .45 on her leg beneath the gown. Clarice Starling smiled at him then, the cabochons caught the firelight and the monster was lost in self-congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning.

She was incompetent. Incompetent for life. She had never figured out how to figure things out. She was only vaguely beginning to know the kind of absence she had of herself inside her.

The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.

She wasn’t crying because of the life she led: because, never having led any other, she’d accepted that with her that was just the way things were. But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling,

Here is a moment of extravagant beauty: I drink it liquid from the shells of my hands and almost all of it runs sparkling through my fingers: but beauty is like that, it is a fraction of a second, quickness of a flash and then immediately it escapes.

I' is merely one of the world's instantaneous spasms.

I'm going to cut you loose. With all due respect, Doctor, if you fuck with me I'll shoot you dead, here and now. Do you understand that?"- Clarice "Perfectly."- Hannibal Lecter "Do right and you'll live through this." -Clarice

Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet.

What I’m writing to you is not for reading— it’s for being.

Reality prior to my language exists as an unthinkable thought. . . . life precedes love, bodily matter precedes the body, and one day in its turn language shall have preceded possession of silence.

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.

The word is my fourth dimension.

I’m restless and harsh and despairing. Although I do have love inside me. I just don’t know how to use love. Sometimes it tears at my flesh, like barbs. If I can hold so much love within me, and nevertheless continue to be uneasy, it’s because I need God to come. Come, before it’s too late. I’m in danger, as is everyone who’s alive.

All the world began with a yes. One molecule said yes to another molecule and life was born. But before prehistory there was the prehistory of the prehistory and there was the never and there was the yes. It was ever so. I don’t know why, but I do know that the universe never began. Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort.

She had no idea how to cope with life and she was only vaguely aware of her own inner emptiness. Were she capable of explaining herself, she might well confide: the world stands outside me. I stand outside myself.

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.

When I suddenly see myself in the depths of the mirror, I take fright. I can scarcely believe that I have limits, that I am outlined and defined. I feel myself to be dispersed in the atmosphere, thinking inside other creatures, living inside things beyond myself. When I suddenly see myself in the mirror, I am not startled because I find myself ugly or beautiful. I discover, in fact, that I possess another quality. When I haven't looked at myself for some time, I almost forget that I am human, I tend to forget my past, and I find myself with the same deliverance from purpose and conscience as something that is barely alive. I am also surprised to find as I gaze into the pale mirror with open eyes that there is so much in me beyond what is known, so much that remains ever silent.

In the world there exists no aesthetic plane, not even the aesthetic plane of goodness.

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.

Que ninguém se engane: só se consegue a simplicidade através de muito trabalho.

… 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.

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.

To eat communion bread will be to taste the world's indifference, and to immerse myself in nothingness.

Meanwhile, the clouds are white and the sky is blue. Why is there so much God? At the expense of men.

I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.

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.

And now -- now it only remains for me to light a cigarette and go home. Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me? Don't forget, in the meantime, that this is the season for strawberries. Yes.

I just know that I don't want cheating. I refuse. I deepened myself but I don't believe in myself because my thought is invented.

Whoever wishes may accompany me: the road is long, it's painful but it's lived.

She was made entirely of a sweetness bordering on tears.

I cannot stand repetition: routine divides me from potential novelties within my reach.

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)

I'm afraid to write. It's so dangerous. Anyone who's tried, knows. The danger of stirring up hidden things - and the world is not on the surface, it's hidden in its roots submerged in the depths of the sea. In order to write I must place myself in the void. In this void is where I exist intuitively. But it's a terribly dangerous void: it's where I wring out blood. I'm a writer who fears the snare of words: the words I say hide others - Which? maybe I'll say them. Writing is a stone cast down a deep well.

You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?” “Sometimes.” “Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they’d be all right too and you wouldn’t wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?” “Yes. I don’t know. Maybe.” “Thank you, Clarice.” Dr. Lecter seemed oddly at peace.

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.

First of all, I must make it clear that this girl does not know herself apart from the fact that she goes on living aimlessly. Were she foolish enough to ask herself 'Who am I?', she would fall flat on her face. For the question 'Who am I?' creates a need. And how does one satisfy that need? To probe oneself is to recognize that one is incomplete.

Reality doesn't surprise me. But that's not true: I suddenly feel such a hunger for the "thing to really happen" that I cry out and bite into reality with my lacerating teeth. And afterwards give a sigh over the captive whose flesh I ate. And again, for a long while, I do without real reality and find comfort in living from my imagination.

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.

Something broke in me and left me with a nerve split in two. In the beginning the extremities linked to the cut hurt me so badly that I paled in pain and perplexity. However the split places gradually scarred over. Until coldly, I no longer hurt. I changed, without planning to. I used to look at you from my inside outward and from the inside of you, which because of love, I could guess. After the scarring I started to look at you from the outside in. And also to see myself from the outside in: I had transformed myself into a heap of facts and actions whose only root was in the domain of logic. At first I couldn't associate me with myself. Where am I? I wondered. And the one who answered was a stranger who told me coldly and categorically: you are yourself.

I see myself abandoned, solitary, thrown into a cell without dimensions, where light and shadows are silent phantoms. Within my inner self I find the silence I am seeking. But it leaves me so bereft of any memory of any human being and of me myself, that I transform this impression into the certainty of physical solitude. Were I to cry out — I can no longer see things clearly — my voice would receive the same indifferent echo from the walls of the earth.

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.

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.

Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.

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.

Reality is the raw material, language is the way I go in search of it - and the way I do not find it. But it is from searching and not finding that what I did not know was born, and which I instantly recognise. Language is my human effort. My destiny is to search and my destiny is to return empty-handed. But - I return with the unsayable. The unsayable can only be given to me through the failure of my language. Only when the construction fails, can I obtain what I could not achieve.

—————— 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.

Mira a todos a tu alrededor y ve lo que hemos hecho de nosotros y de eso considerado como victoria nuestra de cada día. No hemos amado por encima de todas las cosas. No hemos aceptado lo que no se entiende porque no queremos pasar por tontos. Hemos amontonado cosas y seguridades por no tenernos el uno al otro. No tenemos ninguna alegría que no haya sido catalogada. Hemos construido catedrales y nos hemos quedado del lado de afuera, pues las catedrales que nosotros mismos construimos tememos que sean trampas. No nos hemos entregado a nosotros mismos, pues eso sería el comienzo de una vida larga y la tememos. Hemos evitado caer de rodillas delante del primero de nosotros que por amor diga: tienes miedo. Hemos organizado asociaciones y clubs sonrientes donde se sirve con o sin soda. Hemos tratado de salvarnos, pero sin usar la palabra salvación para no avergonzarnos de ser inocentes. No hemos usado la palabra amor para no tener que reconocer su contextura de odio, de amor, de celos y de tantos otros opuestos. Hemos mantenido en secreto nuestra muerte para hacer posible nuestra vida. Muchos de nosotros hacen arte por no saber cómo es la otra cosa. Hemos disfrazado con falso amor nuestra indiferencia, sabiendo que nuestra indiferencia es angustia disfrazada. Hemos disfrazado con el pequeño miedo el gran miedo mayor y por eso nunca hablamos de lo que realmente importa. Hablar de lo que realmente importa es considerado una indiscreción. No hemos adorado por tener la sensata mezquindad de acordarnos a tiempo de los falsos dioses. No hemos sido puros e ingenuos para no reírnos de nosotros mismos y para que al fin del día podamos decir «al menos no fui tonto» y así no quedarnos perplejos antes de apagar la luz. Hemos sonreído en público de lo que no sonreiríamos cuando nos quedásemos solos. Hemos llamado debilidad a nuestro candor. Nos hemos temido uno al otro, por encima de todo. Y todo eso lo consideramos victoria nuestra de cada día.