a.

“It seemed to her that he was ready to live and die for emotional errors as women did, but that like most men he did not call them emotional errors; he called them history, philosophy, metaphysics, science.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“He could not maintain the effort to arrive on time since his lifelong habit had created the opposite habit: to elude, to avoid, to disappoint every expectation of others, every commitment, every promise, every crystallization. The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds —all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes. The importance of rhythm in Djuna was so strong that no matter where she was, even without a watch, she sensed the approach of midnight and would climb on a bus, so instinctively and accurate that very often as she stepped of the bus the twelve loud gongs of midnight would be striking at the large station clock. This obedience to timing was her awareness of the rarity of unity between human beings.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“Céu. A essência mineral do mundo. Pedra, fragmentos de pedra, acesa ou não, girando num vácuo obscuro. A sensação de dureza, de silêncio, desaba sobre a terra. O vago pulsar da vida resistirá? Feita de coisas exactas, astros nas suas órbitas, luz refractada, a solidão desprende-se dum mecanismo frio e só compreensível porque foi posto em andamento com o fim de a gerar. Desprende-se, desaba, matemática e exterior a nós, atinge-nos, tomamos consciência dela, vivemos talvez para que não passe sem ser contemplada. É isto o enigma de Cilinha.”
― Carlos de Oliveira, Pequenos Burgueses

“Jenny leaning far over the table, Robin far back, her legs thrust under her, to balance the whole backward incline of the body, and Jenny so far forward that she had to catch her small legs in the back rung of the chair, ankle out and toe in, not to pitch forward on the table—thus they presented the two halves of a movement that had, as in sculpture, the beauty and the absurdity of a desire that is in flower but that can have no burgeoning, unable to execute its destiny; a movement that can divulge neither caution nor daring, for the fundamental condition for completion was in neither of them; they were like Greek runners, with lifted feet but without the relief of the final command that would bring the foot down—eternally angry, eternally separated, in a cataleptic frozen gesture of abandon.”
― Djuna Barnes, Nightwood