#p. 96

Acknowledging the existence of evil in the world requires giving up another level of innocence, making a further step toward spiritual maturity.

« … L’heure sonna enfin… Elle prit mon bras… Le frôlement de ce corps gracile m’enivrait. La conscience de ma force me grandissait à mes propres yeux. Je me sentais l’orgueil attendri de l’être qui domine et qui protège. »

‘[B]oth Barney and Vivien seized upon the elaborate code of knightly behavior, which involved devotion, courtesy, humility, and seduction by means of “fair words and music and flawless manners and dress,” and stylized it even further. The knight becomes even more perfect, and ever more perfectable [sic] because she is, in fact, a woman. Perhaps like Joan of Arc, and certainly like Shakespeare’s Rosalind, her masculine attire permits her to pursue adventure while her underlying female nature allows her to maintain a level of gentilesse impossible to a male knight by reason of his very gender. Thus Rosalind succeeds in winning Celia’s love because she is gentler and fairer spoken than a genuine man.’

‘I am certain that when I put in my confounding appearance in the world, each of my parents saw me as the just retribution of their respective Gods. Their fanaticism must have been provoked beyond measure, added to their remorse and regrets. I was the very embodiment of the curse of heaven,’

A diversão é como o ópio: nos tira a da miséria e da dor, embora seja tão fugaz.