Near to the Wild Heart
Clarice Lispector
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“The only truth is that I live. Sincerely, I live. Who am I? Well, that's a bit much.”
“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.”
“Freedom isn't enough. What I desire doesn't have a name yet.”
“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.”
“Even great men are only truly recognized and honored once they are dead. Why? Because those who praise them need to feel themselves somehow superior to the person praised, they need to feel they are making some concession. ”
“She wanted even more: to be reborn always, to sever everything that she had learned, that she had seen, and inaugurate herself in new terrain where every tiny act had a meaning, where the air was breathed as if for the first time.”
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Book Keywords:
self, silence, inspirational, music, solitude
