Dan’s Reviews > Dom Casmurro > Status Update

“My fits of jealousy were intense, but brief: in an instant would tear down everything, but in the same instant I would reconstruct the sky, the earth and the stars.
The truth is I grew fonder of Capitú, if that is possible, she more tender, the air more balmy, the nights more bright, and God more God.”

“One of the sacrifices that I make to this hard necessity is the analysis of my seventeen-year-old emotions. I do not know if you were once seventeen. If you were, you must know that it is an age in which a half-man and a half-child form a curious whole. I was a most curious whole, as my dependent José Dias would say, and he would not be far wrong.”

“Timidity is not such vile coin as it is represented. If I had been without fear, it is likely that with the indignation I felt, I would have burst out and called him a liar; but then it would have been necessary to admit that I had been eaves-dropping, and one action would have offset the other. I contented myself with replying that it was not too late.”

He’s just a shy lil baby in love…

“José Dias loved superlatives. It was a means of giving a monumental aspect to his ideas; when he had no ideas, it served to prolong his phrases. […] He walked off with his usual slow step—not the dragging slowness of a lazy man, but a calculated, deliberate slowness, a complete syllogism, the major premise before the minor, the minor premise before the conclusion. A most unpleasant duty!”