A OFERENDA

"Eu queria trazer-te uns versos muito lindos...
 Trago-te estas mãos vazias
 Que vão tomando a forma do teu seio"
                                          - Quintana

"Don't ever kid yourself about loving someone. It is just that most people are not lucky enough ever to have it. You never had it before and now you have it. What you have with Her, whether it lasts just through today and a part od tomorrow, or whether it lasts for a long life is the most important thing that can happen to a human being. There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But i tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow."

-- For Whom the Bell Tolls

"Não há uma boate no mundo onde a gente possa ficar muito tempo, a não ser que tome umas e outras e fique logo de porre. Ou então, a não ser que a gente esteja com alguma garota que deixe o sujeito maluco"

                                                                                 -- O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio, J.D. Salinger

"Havia mais ou menos um milhão de pequenas por ali. Era realmente uma paisagem interessante. De certo modo, também era meio deprimente, porque a gente ficava pensando no que ia acontecer com todas elas. Quer dizer, depois que terminassem o ginásio e a faculdade. A maioria ia provavelmente casar com uns bobalhões. Esses sujeitos que vivem dizendo quantos quilômetros fazem com um litro de gasolina."

                                                                              -- O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio, J.D. Salinger

"- Que bom encontrar com você - falei. Era verdade mesmo. - Como vai você?
 - Maravilhosamente bem. Estou atrasada?
 Disse que não, mas, para falar a verdade, ela estava atrasada uns dez minutos. Mas eu estava pouco ligando para isso. Toda aquela besteira que vem nas piadas do "Saturday Evening Post" e tudo, mostrando uns caras esperando pela namorada na esquina, furiosos porque ela está atrasada - isso é tudo conversa fiada. Se uma garota está bonita quando chega, qual é o sujeito que vai se importar por causa do atraso? Ninguém se importa."

                                                                                 -- O Apanhador no Campo de Centeio, J.D. Salinger

"Minha mãe nem achava a Jane bonita. Mas eu achava. O caso é que eu gostava do jeitinho dela, só isso."

"How many is that you have killed? he asked himself. I
don’t know. Do you think you have a right to kill any one? No. But I have to. How many
of those you have killed have been real fascists? Very few. But they are all the enemy to
whose force we are opposing force. But you like the people of Navarra better than those
of any other part of Spain. Yes. And you kill them. Yes. If you don’t believe it go down
there to the camp. Don’t you know it is wrong to kill? Yes. But you do it? Yes. And you
still believe absolutely that your cause is right? Yes.
 It is right, he told himself, not reassuringly, but proudly. I believe in the people and
their right to govern themselves as they wish. But you mustn’t believe in killing, he told
himself. You must do it as a necessity but you must not believe in it. If you believe in it
the whole thing is wrong.
 But how many do you suppose you have killed? I don’t know because I won’t keep track. But do you know? Yes. How many? You can’t be sure how many. Blowing the
trains you kill many. Very many. But you can’t be sure. But of those you are sure of?
More than twenty. And of those how many were real fascists? Two that I am sure of.
Because I had to shoot them when we took them prisoners at Usera. And you did not
mind that? No. Nor did you like it? No. I decided never to do it again. I have avoided it. I
have avoided killing those who are unarmed.
 Listen, he told himself. You better cut this out. This is very bad for you and for your
work. Then himself said back to him, You listen, see? Because you are doing something
very serious and I have to see you understand it all the time. I have to keep you straight
in your head. Because if you are not absolutely straight in your head you have no right
to do the things you do for all of them are crimes and no man has a right to take another
man’s life unless it is to prevent something worse happening to other people. So get it
straight and do not lie to yourself.
 But I won’t keep a count of people I have killed as though it were a trophy record or a
disgusting business like notches in a gun, he told himself. I have a right to not keep
count and I have a right to forget them.
 No, himself said. You have no right to forget anything. You have no right to shut your
eyes to any of it nor any right to forget any of it nor to soften it nor to change it.
 Shut up, he told himself. You’re getting awfully pompous.
 Nor ever to deceive yourself about it, himself went on.
 All right, he told himself. Thanks for all the good advice and is it all right for me to love
Maria?
 Yes, himself said.
 Even if there isn’t supposed to be any such thing as love in a purely materialistic
conception of society?
 Since when did you ever have any such conception? himself asked. Never. And you
never could have. You’re not a real Marxist and you know it. You believe in Liberty,
Equality and Fraternity. You believe in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Don’t
ever kid yourself with too much dialectics. They are for some but not for you. You have
to know them in order not to be a sucker. You have put many things in abeyance to win
a war. If this war is lost all of those things are lost.
 But afterwards you can discard what you do not believe in. There is plenty you do not
believe in and plenty that you do believe in. "

Ele experimentava pela primeira vez as verdadeiras delicadezas femininas: a elegância, o perfume, o calor, o carinho e o tesão.

'Are they sleeping?'
'No', she said. 'But I could support it no longer. And What importance has it?'
'None', he said, and felt her against him, slim and long and warmly lovely. 'No other thing has importance.'
'Take off thy shirt', he said.
'You think I should?'
'Yes, if you will not be cold."
'Que vá, cold. I am on fire.'
'I too. But afterwards won't you be cold?'
'No. Afterwards we will be as one animal of the forest and be so close that neither one can tell that one of us is one and not the other.'

...

'Oh, maria. Maria. Maria'
Then afterwards, close, with the night cold outside, in the long warmth of the robe, her head touching  his ceek, she lay quiet and happy against him.
'I love thee and I love thy name, Maria,'
'I fell the same', she said. And then 'Now should we sleep? I could sleep easily.'
'Let us sleep,' he said, and he felt the long light body, warm against him, comforting against him, abolishing loneliness against him, magically, by a simple touching of flanks, of shoulders, and of feet, making an alliance against death with him, and he said, 'Sleep well, beloved.'
And in the night he woke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken from him. He held her feeling she was all of life there was and it was true. But she was sleeping well and soundly and she did not wake. So he rolled away on to his side and pulled the robe over her head and kissed her once on her neck under the robe and then pulled the pistol lanyard up and put the pistol by his side where he could reach it handily and then he lay there in the night thinking.

"The Fascists are warm, he thought, and they are comfortable, and to-morrow night we will kill them. It is a strange thing and I do not like to think of it. I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should not be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing."

"I did not know that I could ever feel what I have felt, he thought. Nor that this could happen to me. I would like to have it for my whole life. You will, the other part of him said. You will. You have it now and that is all your whole life is; now. There is nothing else than now. There is neither yesterday, certainly, nor is there any to-morrow. How old must you be before you know that? There is only now, and if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life."

"You were gone when you first saw her. When she first opened her mouth and spoke to you it was there already and you know it.
It hit you then and you know it and so why lie about it? You went all strange inside every time you looked at her and every time she looked at you. So why dont't you admit it? All right. I'll admit it."

" 'Kiss me a little.'
'I do not know how.'
'Just kiss me.'
She kissed him on the cheek.
'No'
'Where do the noses go? I always wondered where the noses would go.'
'Look, turn thy head,' and then their mouths were tight together and she lay close pressed against him and her mouth opened a little gradually and then, suddently, holding her against him, he was happier then he had ever been, lightly, lovingly, exultingly, inner happy and unthinking and untired and unworried and only feeling a great delight and he said, 'My little rabbit. My darling. My sweet. My long lovely.'
They lay there and he felt her heart beating against his and with the side of his foot he stroked very lightly against the side of hers."

                                                                          --For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

"Now as they lay all that before had been shielded was unshielded. Where there had been roughness of fabric all was smooth with a smoothness and firm rounded pressing and a long warm coolnes, cool outside and warm within, long and light and tours, happy-making, young and loving and now all warmly smooth with a hollowing, chest-aching, tight-held loneliness that was such that he felt that he could not stand it and he said, 'Hast thou loved others?'
'Never.'

                                                                             --For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

"He held her still and close, feeling the long lenght of the young body, and he stroked her head and kissed the wet saltiness of her eyes, and as she cried he could feel the rounded, firm-pointed breasts touching through the shirt she wore.
'I cannot kiss,' she said. 'I do not know how.
'There is no need to kiss.'
'Yes. I must kiss. I must do everything.'
'There is no need to do anything. We are all right. But thou hast many clothes.'
'What should I do?'
'I will help you.'
'Is that better?'
'Yes. Much better.' "

                                                                   -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

"She was lovely.
Look at her, he said to himself. Look at her.
He looked at her striding happily in the sun. You do not run on to something like that. Such things don't happen. Maybe it never did happen, he thought. Maybe you dreamed it or made it up and it never did again. Maybe it is like the dreams you have when someone you heve seen in the cinema comes to your bed at night and is so kind and lovely.
Maybe it isn't too, he said to himself. Maybe I could reach over and touch her now, he said to himself. Maybe you are afraid to, he said to himself. Maybe you would find out that it never happened and it was not true and it was something you made up like those dreams about the people of the cinema"

                                                                 -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway