Clarice Lispector

"Clarice Lispector was a born writer....she writes with sensuous verve, bringing her earliest passions into adult life intact, along with a child's undiminished capacity for wonder."—The New York Times Book Review "In 1967, Brazil's leading newspaper asked the avant-garde writer Lispector to write a weekly column on any topic she wished. For almost seven years, Lispector showed Brazilian readers just how vast and passionate her interests were. This beautifully translated collection of selected columns, or crônicas, is just as immediately stimulating today and ably reinforces her reputation as one of Brazil's greatest writers. Indeed, these columns should establish her as being among the era's most brilliant essayists. She is masterful, even reminiscent of Montaigne, in her ability to spin the mundane events of life into moments of clarity that reveal greater truths."—Publishers Weekly

Selected Cronicas

Even my moments of happiness can be so solitary at times. And solitary moments of happiness can be so moving. It is like holding a gift in your hands, beautifully wrapped, but with no one to whom you can say: Here, this is for you, open it!

Belonging does not simply come from being weak and needing to unite oneself to something or someone stronger. An intense desire to belong often comes from my own inner strength - I wish I belong so that my strength will not be useless and may serve to strengthen some other person or thing.

Life has allowed me to belong now and then, as if to give me the measure of what I am losing by not belonging. And then I discovered that: to belong is to live.

Is anger my deep revulsion against being human? I am tired of being human. And angry at feeling so much love. Some days I am angry just to be alive. Because anger enlivens everything.

Anxious to avoid destruction, we destroy ourselves. Agents in disguise and assigned to discreet enquiries, we occasionally recognize each other. A certain manner of looking, a certain way of shaking hands, help us to recognize each other, and we call this love.

Few people desire true love because love shakes our confidence in everything else. And few can bear to lose all their other illusions. There are some who opt for love in the belief that love will enrich their personal lives. On the contrary: love is poverty, in the end. Love is to possess nothing. 

I only know how to be intimate, whatever the circumstances: therefore I tend to be silent. Will we one day achieve all the things we have never done? Future technology threatens to destroy all that is human in man, but technology cannot touch madness: and so that is where all that is human in man can take refuge... To understand complicated things is no advantage, but to love things which invite love is to progress up the human ladder.

Fear has always guided me to the things I love; and because I love, I become afraid. It was often fear which took me by the hand and led me. Fear leads me to danger. And everything I love has an element of risk.

Selected Cronicas quotes

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