Hour Of The Star Clarice Lispector Quotes

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.

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

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

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

I am only true when I’m alone.

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

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

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

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

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,

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 am not an intellectual, I write with my body. And what I write is a moist fog.

Actually even the worst childhood is always enchanted, how awful.

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.

For at the hour of death you became a celebrated film star, it is a moment of glory for everyone, when the choral music scales the top notes.

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

Why don’t clouds fall, since everything else does? Because gravity is less than the strength of the air that keeps them up there. Clever, right? Yes, but one day they fall as rain. That is my revenge.

She knew what desire was — though she didn’t know she knew. It was like this: she was starving but not for food, it was a kind of painful taste that rose from the pit of her stomach and made her nipples quiver and her arms empty without an embrace.

As soon as you discover the truth it's already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is it? Reply: it's not.

Quem já não se perguntou: sou um monstro ou isto é ser uma pessoa?

Truth is always an interior and inexplicable contact. My truest life is unrecognizable, extremely interior and there is not a single word that defines it. My heart has emptied itself of every desire and been reduced to its own final or primary beat.

Because there are times when a person needs a little bitty death and doesn't even know it. As for me, I substitute the act of death for a symbol of it. A symbol that can be summed up in a deep kiss but not on a rough wall but mouth-to-mouth in the agony of pleasure that is death. I, who symbolically die several times just to experience the resurrection

There are those who have. And there are those who have not. It's very simple: the girl had not. Hadn't what? Simply this: she had not. If you get my meaning that's fine. If you don't, it's still fine.

Porque há o direito ao grito. Então eu grito.

Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season

And now-now all I can do is light a cigarette and go home. My God, I just remembered that we die. But-but me too?! Don't forge that for now it's strawberry season. Yes.

I feel happier with animals than with people. When I watch my horse cantering freely across the fields— I am tempted to put my head against his soft, vigorous neck and narrate the story of my life. When I stroke my dog on the head — I know that he doesn't expect me to make sense or explain myself.

One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking...

Do not be frightened. Death is instantaneous and passes in a flash. I know, for I have just died with the girl. Forgive my dying. It was unavoidable.

Death is an encounter with oneself.

Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking.

Sou um monstro ou isso é ser uma pessoa?

Enquanto eu tiver perguntas e não houver resposta continuarei a escrever.

The doctor simply refused to take pity. And added: when you don’t know what to eat make a nice Italian spaghetti.

(...) Vivimos exclusivamente en el presente pues siempre y eternamente es el día de hoy -y el día de mañana será un hoy, la eternidad es el estado de las cosas en este momento.

I write because I have nothing else to do in the world: I was left over and there is no place for me in the world of men. I write because I'm desperate and I'm tired, I can no longer bear the routine of being me and if not for the always novelty that is writing, I would die symbolically every day. But I am prepared to slip out discreetly through the back exit. I've experienced almost everything, including passion and its despair. And now I'd only like to have what I would have been and never was.

Only then did she see that her life was miserable. She felt like crying when she saw her other side, she who, as I said, had always thought she was happy.

É que ela sentia falta de encontrar-se consigo mesma e sofrer um pouco é um encontro.

Quiero aceptar mi libertad sin pensar en lo que muchos creen: que existir es cosa de locos, un caso de demencia. Porque lo parece. Existir no es lógico.

Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

The future, at least, had the advantage of not being the present, and the worse can always take a turn for the better... For, strange though it may seem, she had faith. Composed of fine organic matter, she existed. Pure and simple.

Macabéa had a passion for horror films and musicals. She especially liked films where the women were hanged or shot through the heart with a bullet. It never dawned on her that she herself was a suicide case even though she had never contemplated killing herself. Her life was duller than plain bread and butter.

Qué se puede hacer con la verdad de que todo el mundo esté un poco triste y un poco solo.

Tal vez la norestina ya hubiese llegado a la conclusión de que la vida incomoda bastante, el alma no cabe bien en el cuerpo, aun un alma pobre como la suya.

She transformed herself into organic simplicity. And she’d figured out how to find in simple and honest things the grace of sin.

I'll miss myself so bad when I die.

If she was no longer herself that meant a loss that counted as a gain.

Dear God, only now am I remembering that people die. Does that include me?

Who hasn't ever wondered: am I monster or is this what it means to be a person?

What can you do with the truth that everyone’s a little sad and a little alone.

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.

I ask: will she ever someday know love's farewell? Will she ever someday know the swoonings of love? Will she take in her own way the sweet journey? I know nothing. What can you do with the truth that everyone's a little sad and a little alone.

In no sense an intellectual, I write with my body. And what I write is like a dank haze. The words are sounds transfused with shadows that intersect unevenly, stalactites, woven lace, transposed organ music. I can scarcely invoke the words to describe this pattern, vibrant and rich, morbid and obscure, its counterpoint the deep bass of sorrow.

Sim, minha força está na solidão. Não tenho medo nem de chuvas tempestivas nem das grandes ventanias soltas, pois eu também sou o escuro da noite. Embora não aguente bem ouvir um assovio no escuro, e passos.

She had what's known as inner life and didn't know it. She lived off herself as if eating her own entrails. When she went to work she looked like a gentle lunatic because as the bus went along she daydreamed in loud and dazzling dreams. These dreams, because of all that interiority, were empty because they lacked the essential nucelus of⁠—of ecstasy, let's say. Most of the time she had without realizing it the void that fills the souls of the saints. Was she a saint? So it seems. She didn't know what she was meditating because she didn't know what the word meant. But it seems to me that her life was a long meditation on the nothing. Except she needed others in order to believe in herself, otherwise she'd get lost in the successive and round emptiness inside her. She meditated while she was typing and that's why she made even more mistakes.

That not-knowing might seem awful but it's not that bad because she knew lots of things in the way nobody teaches a dog to wag his tail or a person to feel hungry; you're born and you just know. Just as nobody one day would teach her how to die: yet she'd surely die one day as if she'd learned the starring role by heart. For at the hour of death a person becomes a shining movie star, it's everyone's moment of glory and it's when as in choral chanting you hear the whooshing shrieks.

- Por que é que você me pede tanta aspirina? Não estou reclamando, embora isso custe dinheiro. - É para eu não me doer. - Como é que é? Hein? Você se dói? - Eu me doo o tempo todo. - Aonde? - Dentro, não sei explicar.

She had what’s known as inner life and didn’t know it. She lived off herself as if eating her own entrails. When she went to work she looked like a gentle lunatic because as the bus went along she daydreamed in loud and dazzling dreams.

As coisas estavam de algum modo tão boas que podiam se tornar muito ruins porque o que amadurece plenamente pode apodrecer.

Όσο για το γράψιμο, περισσότερο αξίζει ένα ζωντανό σκυλί.

In no sense an intellectual, I write with my body.

Mientras tenga preguntas y no tenga respuesta continuaré escribiendo.

She was supersonic in life. Nobody noticed that with her existence she was breaking the sound barrier. For other people she didn’t exist.

é assim porque é assim. Existe no mundo outra resposta? Se alguém sabe de uma melhor, que se apresente e a diga, estou há anos esperando.

que os mortos me ajudem a suportar o quase insuportável, já que de nada me valem os vivos.

She herself asked for nothing, but her sex made its demands like a sunflower germinating in a tomb.

Only later did she think with satisfaction: I'm a typist and a virgin, and I like coca-cola.

So she repented. Since she wasn't quite sure for what, she repented entirely and for everything.

⁠—Look, haven't you noticed, none of your questions have answers?

No one can enter another's heart.

Because there are times when a person needs a little bitty death and doesn't even know it.

Ela acreditava em anjo e, porque acreditava, eles existiam" (A Hora da Estrela)

No, no es fácil escribir. Es duro como partir rocas. Pero saltan chispas y astillas como aceros pulidos.

And I want to accept my freedom without thinking what so many do, that existing is something for fools, a case of madness. Because that’s what it seems like. Existing isn’t logical.

Because, no matter how bad her situation, she didn't want to be deprived of herself, she wanted to be herself. She thought she'd incur serious punishment and even risk dying if she took too much pleasure in life. So she protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she'd never run out. This savings have her a little security since you can't fall farther than the ground. Did she feel she was living for nothing? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking. She sometimes on payday bought herself a rose.

Que la vida es así: se pulsa un botón y la vida se enciende. Sólo que ella no sabía cuál era el botón que había que pulsar. Ni se daba cuenta de que vivía en una sociedad tecnificada donde ella era un tornillo prescindible.

Forgive me but I’m going to keep talking about me who am unknown to myself, and as I write I’m a bit surprised because I discover I have a destiny. Who hasn’t ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

Speaking for myself, I am only true when I'm alone. As a child, I always feared that I was about to fall off the face of the earth at any minute. Why do the clouds keep afloat when everything else drops to the ground? The explanation is simple: the gravity is less than the force of air that sustains the clouds. Clever, don't you think? Yes, but sooner or later they fall in the form of rain. That is my revenge.

— she was inept. Inept for living. 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 - and don't forget that the structure of the atom cannot be seen but it nonetheless known. I know about lots of things I've never seen. And so do you. You can't show proof of the truest thing of all, all you can do is believe. Weep and believe.

Esa muchacha no sabía que ella era lo que era, tal como un cachorro no sabe que es cachorro. Por eso no se sentía infeliz. Lo único que quería era vivir. No sabía para qué, no se lo preguntaba. Quién sabe, tal vez encontraba que había una ínfima gloria en vivir. Pensaba que una persona está obligada a ser feliz. De modo que lo era.

Those I love go in the direction of what they call the last hour—what Clarice Lispector calls, “the hour of the star,” “the hour of relinquishing all the lies that have helped us live. Writing or saying the truth is equivalent to death, since we cannot tell the truth. It is forbidden because it hurts everyone. We never say the truth, we must lie, mostly as a result of our two needs: our need for love and cowardice.

On the pavement tiny blades of grass sprouted between the flagstones — Macabéa noticed them because she always noticed things that were tiny and insignificant. She thought dreamily, as she rang the doorbell: grass is so easy and simple. Her thoughts were gratuitous and unconnected because, however erratic, she possessed vast reserves of inner freedom.

Quando rezava conseguia um oco de alma - e esse oco é o tudo que posso eu jamais ter. Mais do que isso, nada. Mas o vazio tem valor e a semelhança do pleno. Um meio de obter é não procurar, um meio de ter é o de não pedir e somente acreditar que o silêncio que eu creio em mim é resposta e meu - a meu mistério.

Así como nadie le enseñaría un día a morir: seguramente un día moriría como si antes se hubiese estudiado de memoria la representación del papel de una estrella. Pues en la hora de la muerte las personas se vuelven brillantes estrellas de cine, es el instante de gloria de cada uno y es como cuando en el canto coral se oyen agudos silbantes.

Una furtiva lacrima" had been the only really beautiful thing in her life. Wiping away her own tears she tried to sing what she heard. But her voice was as crude and out of tune as she was. When she heard it she started to cry. It was the first time she'd ever cried, she didn't know she had so much water in her eyes. She cried, blew her nose no longer knowing what she was crying about. 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, there were more delicate existences and even a certain luxury of soul.

Because, no matter how bad her situation, she didn't want to be deprived of herself, she wanted to be herself. She thought she'd incur serious punishment and even risk dying if she took too much pleasure in life. So she protected herself from death by living less, consuming so little of her life that she'd never run out. This savings gave her a little security since you can't fall farther than the ground. Did she feel she was living for nothing? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Only once did she ask a tragic question: who am I? It frightened her so much that she completely stopped thinking. She sometimes on payday bought herself a rose.

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 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.

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. Mas preparado estou para sair discretamente pela saída da porta dos fundos. Experimentei quase tudo, inclusive a paixão e o seu desespero. E agora só quereria ter o que eu tivesse sido e não fui.

Antecedentes meus do escrever? sou um homem que tem mais dinheiro do que os que passam fome, o que faz de mim de algum modo um desonesto. E só minto na hora exata da mentira. Mas quando escrevo não minto. Que mais? Sim, não tenho classe social, marginalizado que sou. A classe alta me tem como um monstro esquisito, a média com desconfiança de que eu possa desequilibrá-la, a classe baixa nunca vem a mim. Não, não é fácil escrever. É duro como quebrar rochas. Mas voam faíscas e lascas como aços espelhados.

Tudo isso, sim, a história é história. Mas sabendo antes para nunca esquecer que a palavra é fruto da palavra. A palavra tem que se parecer com a palavra. Atingi-la é o meu primeiro dever para comigo. E a palavra não pode ser enfeitada e artisticamente vã, tem que ser apenas ela. Bem, é verdade que também queria alcançar uma sensação fina e que esse finíssimo não se quebrasse em linha perpétua. Ao mesmo tempo que quero também alcançar o trombone mais grosso e baixo, grave e terra, tão a troco de nada que por nervosismo de escrever eu tivesse um acesso incontrolável de riso vindo do peito. E quero aceitar minha liberdade sem pensar o que muitos acham: que existir é coisa de doido, caso de loucura. Porque parece. Existir não é lógico.