Clarice Lispector Quotes

Am I too fast, too facile? I do not know. I do not know myself sometimes, or how to measure and name and count out the grains that make me what I am.

Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret.

For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human terms wherein my individuality consists. In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.

If you ask me to play myself, I will not know what to do. I do not know who or what I am.

To me, self-description is a calamity.

I’m beginning to know myself. I don’t exist. I’m the space between what I’d like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.

I stare at the mirror as I try to remember who I am and who I am not.

I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

And identity is funny being yourself is funny as you are never yourself to yourself except as you remember yourself and then of course you do not believe yourself.

Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?

That's the way I feel, at least: like there's a real me and a reflection of me, and I have no way of telling which is which.

I acknowledge that I have no idea who the hell I am, and I think that's the first step.

Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

I'm going to pull myself together for a while and think-try to determine what character of a woman I am; for, candidly, I don't know. By all the codes which I am acquainted with, I am a devilishly wicked specimen of the sex. But some way I can't convince myself that I am. I must think about it.

I am infinitely strange to myself.

We exist for ourselves, perhaps, and at times we even have a glimmer of who we are, but in the end we can never be sure, and as our lives go on, we become more and more opaque to ourselves, more and more aware of our own incoherence. No one can cross the boundary into another – for the simple reason that no one can gain access to himself.

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

Am I a 'woman of action'? I don't think of myself that way.

The actor has a constant problem of personal identity.

Throughout my life, I have grappled with my own identity, who I am. As a young child, I often felt ambivalent about myself, in fact, confused.

I think I am one of those who can manage not to take on a completely different appearance under their own glance.

I feel like a mirror reflecting back everyone's perception of me.

I'm always shocked when I see myself because I don't recognize myself.

I don't know what I am. And it's not important.

I could easily not be the person that people know.