“Mais duras, mais cruéis, mais rigorosas.”

Três Marias, Novas Cartas Portuguesas

 “e tu dizes «que maravilha, que maravilha», como dizes a tudo o que é novo, te abriga e não obriga, «tu de vidro». E tu de vidro e carne nova dás teu espaço à noite e teu passado, tagarelas a entrada, minuetas tuas cercanias nunca próximas de gente, a gente das letras, os desapalavrados disto, os objectos marcados pelo tu deixá-los lá, a tua antiguidade, porque tu és a mais antiga e a mais nova”

Três Marias, Novas Cartas Portuguesas

Cidade

«Lifts rise and fall; trains stop, trains start as regularly as the waves of the sea. This is what has my adhesion. I am a native of this world, I follow its banners. How could I run for shelter when they are so magnificently adventurous, daring, curious, too, and strong enough in the midst of effort to pause and scrawl with a free hand a joke upon the wall? Therefore I will powder my face and redden my lips. I will make the angle of my eyebrows sharper than usual. I will rise to the surface, standing erect with the others in Piccadilly Circus.»

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

Cidade

«The train slows and lengthens, as we approach London, the centre, and my heart draws out too, in fear, in exultation. I am about to meet what? What extraordinary adventure waits me, among these mail vans, these porters, these swarms of people calling taxis? I feel insignificant, lost, but exultant. With a soft shock we stop. I will let the others get out before me. I will sit still one moment before I emerge into that chaos. that tumult. I will not anticipate what is to come. The huge uproar is in my ears. It sounds and resounds under this glass roof like the surge of a sea. We are cast down on the platform with our handbags. We are whirled asunder. My sense of self almost perishes; my contempt. I become drawn in, tossed down, thrown sky-high. I step out on to the platform, grasping tightly all that I possess - one bag.»

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

«I am one person - myself. I do not impersonate Catullus, whom I adore. I am the most slavish of students, with here a dictionary, there a notebook in which I enter curious uses of the past participle. But one cannot go on for ever cutting these ancient inscriptions clearer with a knife. Shall I always draw the red serge curtain close and see my book, laid like a block of marble, pale under the lamp? That would be a glorious life, to addict oneself to perfection; to follow the curve of the sentence wherever it might lead, into deserts, under drifts of sand, regardless of lures, of seductions; to be poor always and unkempt; to be ridiculous in Piccadilly.»

Virginia Woolf, The Waves