Catherine’s Reviews > The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas > Status Update

I was not distraught; I took them to the cemetery as one might take money to the bank. What am I saying? As one might take letters to the post office...

Reader, do not be irritated by this confession. I am well aware that in order to titillate your fancy, I ought to sink into tremendous despair, shed a few tears, and forgo lunch. It would be novelesque, but it would not be biographical. The pure reality is that I lunched, as I had on other days...

“You‘re not worth the sacrifices I make” is the most vicious break-up line in the history of culture

This book’s greatest flaw is you, reader. You are in a hurry to grow old, and the book moves slowly; you love direct, robust narration and a smooth and regular style, and this book and my style are like drunkards, they veer right and left, stop and go, grumble, bellow, cackle, threaten the skies, slip, and fall…

there is a whole chapter of this book that’s just punctuation. your fav could never

“Let Pascal say that man is a thinking reed. No; he is a thinking erratum, that’s what he is. Each season of life is an edition that corrects the last and that will be corrected in turn until the definitive edition, which the editor delivers to the worms, free of charge.”