“Like her friend and admirer Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst was a passionate explorer of the sacred and the profane.”

The pure and the obscene, and shows, in this discomfiting, hypnotic work, just how rarely those categories are what they seem. The translation is excellent – what a rare relief.

I studied mathematics which is the madness of reason.

Vocation is different from talent. One can have vocation and not have talent; one can be called and not know how to go.

It’s one thing if everyone wears the same shoes or drinks the same soda. But the world of literature is the last place in which globalization should mean homogeneity.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

I can finally cry and let it be relief. My tears can be my medicine and not my poison.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

When you are starved for a moment of relief, you’ll eat their poison by the mouth full, no questions until the digestion leads to new problems.

I’ve always had a fear of endings, but it comes as relief to me that among all the dying things, I am one too.

Stress and anxiety have to be dealt with holistically to find true relief and healing.