Status Updates From Torture Garden (Decadence f...

O último reduto é o chá preto desta manhã e tabaco cubano

"Was she not born of my debauchery and fever? Is she not one of those impossible visions to which nightmares give birth? One of those criminal temptations such as lust stirs in the imagination of those invalids called assassins and murderers? Might she not be nothing more than my soul, escaped from me despite myself and materialized in the form of sin? No... for I can touch her."

"There are some who assert they are perverse! Flowers perverse! In fact, they no longer know what to write. Have you ever heard such monstrous nonsense, milady? Why, flowers are violent, cruel, terrible and splendid... like love!"

"Then, with an air of tranquil satisfaction: “Yesterday, it was very strange. I made a woman out of a man. He! he! And it was such a good job you couldn't tell the difference, and I myself was fooled looking at him."

When you get your gender reassignment surgery in the Torture Garden

I'm finishing this book today...

Halfway done...phew phew

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced."

I was waiting to see when the colonialist themes and exoticization from the characters would appear... unsurprisingly early

Very interesting, so far. Engaging word choice! Tortured narrator...ohhh yesss...

"My name matters little; it is the name of a man who has caused great suffering to others as well as to himself-even more to himself than to others and who, after many shocks suffered in a descent to the very dregs of human desire, is trying to reconstruct a soul for himself in solitude and obscurity. Peace to the ashes of his sin."