“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.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

The back is like a frame, the front body, the painting that it throws into relief.

One fact stands out in bold relief in the history of man’s attempts for betterment. That is that when compulsion is used, only resentment is aroused, and the end is not gained. Only through moral suasion and appeal to man’s reason can a movement succeed.

Do I do this to you?, he wondered, as he watched her eat. Or is this just the relief of being out from under the forbidden eye of that husband of yours?

The new cycle which begins with the ninth year of the Fascist regime places the alternative in even greater relief either we or they, either their ideas or ours, either our State or theirs!

Anyone who has obeyed nature by transmitting a piece of gossip experiences the explosive relief that accompanies the satisfying of a primary need.

We are not people who touch each other carelessly; every point of contact between us feels important, a rush of energy and relief.

Obama just came swiftly out of nowhere, which was a relief to those of us who care about the Republic, and at first he seemed a very good thing.