Man is...a thinking erratum, that's what he is. Every season of life is an edition that corrects the one before and which will also be corrected itse… - Machado de Assis

For some time I debated over whether I should start these memoirs at the beginning or at the end, that is, whether I should put my birth or my death in first place. Since common usage would call for beginning with birth, two considerations led me to adopt a different method: the first is that I am not exactly a writer who is dead but a dead man who is a writer, for whom the grave was a second cradle; the second is that the writing would be more distinctive and novel in that way. Moses, who also wrote about his death, didn't place it at the opening but at the close: a radical difference between this book and the Pentateuch.

A melhor definição do amor não vale um beijo de moça namorada.

A vida é tão bela que a mesma idéia da morte precisa de vir primeiro a ela, antes de se ver cumprida.