a.

“He would make such detours to obey his own rhythm and not the city's that the simplest act of shaving and buying a steak would take hours, and the vitally important letter would never be written. If he passed a cigar store, his habit of counter-discipline would be stronger than his own needs and he would forget to buy the cigarettes he craved, but later when about to reach the house of a friend for lunch he would make a long detour for cigarettes and arrive too late for lunch, to find his angry friend gone, and thus once more the rhythm and pattern of the city were destroyed.”
― 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

“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

“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