“Because I was making an incorrect mathematical calculation about love: I thought that, in adding up everything I understood, I loved. I didn’t know that, adding up everything you don’t understand is the way to truly love. Because I, just from having felt affection, thought that loving is easy. It’s because I didn’t want solemn love, not understanding that solemnity ritualizes incomprehension and transforms it into an offering. And also because I’ve always tended to fight a lot, fighting everything is my way of doing things. It’s because deep down I want to love the thing I would love – and not what it is. It’s because I’m still not myself, and so the punishment is loving a world that’s not itself.”
— Clarice Lispector, Forgiving God (trans. Katrina Dodson)
