“But the now-instant is a firefly that turns on and off, on and off. The present is the instant in which the wheel of an automobile going at high speed barely touches the ground. And the part of the wheel that has not yet made contact will touch in an immediacy that absorbs the present and turns it into past. I, alive and flickering like the instants, turn myself on and off, on and off, on and off. Only what I capture in myself, when, as it is now, it’s being transposed into writing, has the despair of words occupying more instants than a glance. More than an instant, I want its flowing.”

Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva.