Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (originally published in 1935 and issued in English translation in 1965), an existentialist novel about a man who reacts physically to the absurdity of life, inspired Lispector's work.

Lispector also admired Virginia Woolf. An excellent example of Woolf's work is To the Lighthouse (1927), a psychologically oriented portrayal of a young painter who struggles to express her fluid perceptions of life, which contrast markedly with the compass-ordered observations made by men.

Lispector related to Katherine Mansfield's novel Bliss (1920), about which she remarked, "This book is me."

Chilean writer Maria Luisa Bombal's House of Mist (1935) did for Chile what Lispector's works did for Brazil—shifted focus away from politics and into the feminine mind.