Clarice Lispector Quotes

Oh, Callie-mine," Anne said, her voice taking on a tone she'd used when Callie was a little girl and crying over some injustice, "your white knight, he will come." One side of Callie's mouth kicked up in a wry smile. Anne had said those words countless times over the last two decades. "Forgive me, Anne, but I'm not so certain that he will." Oh, he will," Anne said firmly. "And when you least expect." I find I'm rather tired of waiting." Callie laughed half-heartedly. "Which is probably why I've turned my attentions to such a dark knight.

Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

I'll never know what it was he wanted me to remember.

That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith.

One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.

Everyone always wants to find the answer, to feel that things are resolved. But in dreams, maybe there isn't an answer so much.

The interval between a cold expectation and a warm desire may be filled by expectations of varying degrees of warmth or by desires of varying degrees of coldness.

To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us.

Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.

I know not if the dark or bright shall be by lot; if that wherein my hopes delight be best or not.

To me, nothing ever feels like a sure thing. I cling to that because it's very important you don't ever think anything is a sure thing.

Hope and certainty are the enemies of peace.

How can you say you want to be somewhere when you're not really sure if they want you there because they're not even talking to you?

I don't know what the future will bring.

'Almost' is about uncertainty soon to be dismissed but not quite dispelled. 'Almost' is about revelation to come but not entirely promised.

I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.

Hope is a dream deferred.

I don't know if I'll find the cinnamon girl. I think I already did, but I'm still singing, who knows.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

He found himself still with too many questions and not enough answers.

It was a gloomy prospect, and all that she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away, she should see something else.

to hope was to expect

One cannot but mistrust a prospect of felicity: one must enjoy it before one can believe in it.

Remember that the future is neither ours nor wholly not ours, so that we may neither count on it as sure to come nor abandon hope of it as certain not to be.