A Hora da Estrela by Clarice Lispector, r. Jun. 2018 and Mar. 2025

p. 27 Essa moça não sabia que ela era o que era, assim como um cachorro não sabe que é cachorro. Daí não se sentir infeliz. A única coisa que queria era viver. Não sabia para quê, não se indagava.

p. 36 Pensando bem: quem não é um acaso na vida? Quanto a mim, só me livro de ser apenas um acaso porque escrevo, o que é um ato que é um fato.

p. 39 Em todo casa o futuro parecia vir a ser muito melhor. Pelo menos o futuro tinha a vantagem de não ser o presente...

p. 39 Será que entrando na semente de sua vida estarei como que violando o segredo dos faraós? Terei castigo de morte por falar de uma vida que contém como todas as nossas vidas um segredo inviolável?

p. 47 Enfim o que fosse acontecer, aconteceria. E por enquanto nada acontecia, os dois não sabiam inventar acontecimentos.

p. 60 É melhor eu não falar em felicidade ou infelicidade - provoca aquela saudade desmaiada e lilás, aquele perfume de violeta, as águas geladas da maré mansa em espumas pela areia. Eu não quero provocar porque dói.

p. 69 - Eu sou sozinha no mundo e não acredito em ninguém, todos mentem, às vezes até na hora do amor, eu não acho que um ser fale com o outro, a verdade só me vem quando estou sozinha.

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p. 6 One way of getting is not looking, one way of having is not asking and only believing that the silence I believe to be inside me is the answer to my – to my mystery.

p. 7 Who hasn't ever wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?

p. 10 ...we live exclusively in the present because it is always eternally today and tomorrow will be a today, eternity is the state of things at this very moment.

p. 12 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.

p. 18 Meanwhile the clouds are white and the sky is all blue. Why so much God. Why not a little for men.

p. 24 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.

p. 54 The air? You can't tell everything because the everything is a hollow nothing.

p. 63 She vaguely thought while ringing the doorbell: grass is so easy and simple. She had unprompted and stray thoughts because even though she was at random she possessed much inner freedom.

p. 72 The worst part is that I have to forgive them. We must reach such a nothing that we indifferently love or don't love the criminal who kills us. But I'm not sure of myself: I have to ask, though I don't know who can answer, if I really have to love the one who slays me and ask who amongst you slays me. And my life stronger than myself, replies that it wants revenge at all costs and replies that I must struggle like someone drowning, even if I die in the end. If that's the way it is, so be it.

p. 76 As soon as you discover the truth it's already gone: the moment passed. I ask: what is? Reply: it's not.

p. 77 My God, I just remembered that we die. But – but me too?!

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, r. May 2018

p. 49 The feeling of apartness from others comes to most with puberty, but it is not always developed to such a degree as to make the difference between the individual and his fellows noticeable to the individual. It is such as he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are the lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common.

p. 88 The school seemed less of a prison when he knew that before Easter he would be free from it for ever. His heart danced within him. That evening in chapel he looked round at the boys, standing according to their forms, each in his due place, and he chuckled with satisfaction at the thought that soon we would never see them again. It made him regard them almost with a friendly feeling.

p. 121 It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched, for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real they are bruised and wounded.

p. 142 He had read many descriptions of love, and he felt in himself none of that uprush of emotion which novelists described; he was not carried off his feet in wave upon wave of passion; nor was Miss Wilkinson the ideal: he had often pictured to himself the great violet eyes and the alabaster skin of some lovely girl, and he had thought of himself burying his face in the rippling masses of her auburn hair. He could not imagine himself burying his face in Miss Wilkinson's hair, it always struck him as a little sticky.

p. 207 "I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about."

p. 210 "I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience."

p. 224 It grew so hot that it was almost impossible to sleep at night. The heat seemed to linger under the trees as though it were a material thing. They did not wish to leave the starlit night, and the three of them would sit on the terrace of Ruth Chalice's room, silent, hour after hour, too tired to talk any more, but in voluptuous enjoyment of the stillness. They listened to the murmur of the river.

p. 242 "What happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it while we were doing it."

p. 243 Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one had only one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring of money or the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and the making the most of his abilities.

p. 248 "Money is like a sixth sense without which you cannot make a complete use of the other five. Without an adequate income half the possibilities of life are shut off."

p. 321 "Why do you read then?" "Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read is if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me, and I can't get anything more if I read it a dozen times."

p. 384 They thought him reasonable and praised his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was no more than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted like the protective coloring of butterflies; and himself was astonished at the weakness of his will. It seemed to him that he was swayed by every light emotion, as though he were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was powerless. He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it because he was so indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.

p. 405 "You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay." [dying of cirrhosis]

p. 422 "May I see what you're reading?" asked Philip, who could never pass a book without looking at it.

p. 432 "Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and tho morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer."

p. 524 His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty.

p. 524-525 [photo] Persian rug pattern analogy - weaving your own pattern, simple or complex, is the meaning of life, for beauty's sake.

P. 601 Philip had never been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute desire for a well-ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future; and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels.