Andrew Stewart > Recent Status Updates

I see he had a few thoughts on women…

Thrusymachus: Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are, and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends 15 minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I’ve now got more important things to do, goodbye.

“You can also look up upon our life as an episode unprofitably disturbing the blessed calm of nothingness…
For the world is hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls, and on the other the devils in it.”

Aw come on bud. Onward and upward yeah?

“A quick test of the assertion that enjoyment outweighs pain in this world, or that they are at any rate balanced, would be to compare the feelings of an animal engaged in eating another with those of the animal being eaten.”
!!

How’s this for a tone setter:

“If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering, then our existence is the most ill adopted to its purpose in the world…
Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule.”

There are dystopias and then there is this book that makes all the other dystopias seem pleasant in comparison.

Trollope somehow manages to make his books feel like great literature and a guilty pleasure at the same time.

What confronted us now was a group of pickpockets. My mother stabbed the air with a butcher knife. “One step closer and you’re dead” she snarled. Ale and I clung to her like koalas we’d seen pictures of. We must’ve looked ridiculous because we were taller than she was. “Don’t worry my precious little girls. I’ve got everything under control. Watch and learn kids how to deal with motherfuckers.”

Mules didn’t live long. They looked 90 but the oldest they lived to be was about 35. Usually they died from being mules, but sometimes they died at the hands of the military are the secret police who liked to use them for torture practice, and then throw their bodies into unmarked graves.

mules were Indian men who waited outside the markets. They had ropes dangling and their feet looked like old shoes. If you accepted the mule bent over and his back became the counter on which you piled your belongings. He would grunt as the load grew, eyes on the ground. After awhile, all you’d see was two brown legs with the feet shifting around. When you were done loading, you kicked the mule in the shins.

“ in Peru, if you wanted to look up the definition of a word, youd need two dictionaries: the Poor Peru dictionary, and the Rich Peru dictionary. If you looked up the word bathroom in the poor peru dictionary, the definition would be “just over the hill there”. If you looked it up in the rich Peru dictionary it would read “marble room with gold taps and its own servant to keep it sparkling”.

“And, though we'd been taught from the start of night flying training that we must believe the instruments every time, it was very easy to disbelieve them. Sometimes you were convinced that you were upside down when the instruments told you you were right side up. It could literally be fatal to trust your own instincts in the dark.”

“She said to him, "Let's get the fighting over first, darling - then maybe we can talk about love, eh?”

“he appreciated his coquettish reception by Mrs. O’Dwyer, an amputee confined by severe edema to a hospital bed in what had been her dining room. ”

Gah thats on the first page thats so depressing. Your hospital bed where you used to dine. Ok give me more 👍

Unless there is a dramatic turn of events in the final chapters, then even the one single thing I thought I knew about this story I was wrong about. It’s good to be ignorant sometimes.

🎵everybody’s making love or else expecting rain🎵

That lyric and song has been in my head throughout this book

Frantically burning through the pages until my boy quasimodo starts fkn people up

Keep him away from the goat

The priest is getting pervy now. And that strains my credulity not one bit.

The goat unwittingly testified against her!! Oh mon dieu

Do what you will with esmerelda, but dont you dare lay a hand on that goat