Currently Reading

Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes

Translated by Edith Grossman

📖 677/939

Don Quixote is my current "slow read".

How slow you ask? I started it on October 8, 2025.

Sometimes I read the physical book, sometimes the Kindle version, and sometimes I listen to the audiobook while reading along in the book. And sometimes, I don't read it at all - missing days or even a week at a time.

It has truly been a slow read.

Reading the novel while listening to the audiobook at the same time is new for me. I just wanted to try it after reading about the practice in a book called Mozart and the Fighter Pilot by Richard Restak, M.D., which I read years ago.

Toward the beginning of this year (2026), I started to wonder if it was taking so long because I wasn’t truly enjoying this novel. But when I reached the end of Part One, I immediately missed Don Quixote and Sancho and their “adventures.” That’s when I realized how much I was enjoying the book.

I’m about 67% of the way through, and I’m at a crossroads: do I read faster because I’m enjoying it so much, or slow down to make it last longer? We’ll see how it plays out.

As I read I feel like I could write a whole sections just on the way women were perceived and talked about in this book. Wild.

Notes along the (reading) way:

This book is hilarious, kind of raunchy. I had no idea it was so funny! And sad. It's kind of sad too.

Sancho is the best.

Quotes:

All quotes come from the Edith Grossman translation Cervantes' Don Quixote.

"In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind." (p. 21)

"Don Quixote did not sleep at all that night but thought of his lady Dulcinea, in order to conform to what he had read in his books of knights spending many sleepless nights in groves and meadows..." (pp. 60-61)

"Besides, if truth be told, what I eat, even if it’s bread and onion, tastes much better to me in my corner without fancy or respectful manners, than a turkey would at other tables where I have to chew slowly, not drink too much, wipe my mouth a lot, not sneeze or cough if I feel like it, or do other things that come with solitude and freedom." (p. 76)

"I deserve to have clouds fill the fair sky of your eyes when you hear of my death, forbid it, for I want you unrepentant, without remorse, when I hand to you the ruins of my soul..." (p. 97)

"Well, like they say, you need a long time to know a person, and nothing in this life is certain." (p. 106)

"...he struggled to his feet, threw his arms around Maritornes, and the two of them began the fiercest and most laughable scuffle the world has ever seen." (pp. 114-115)

"For I must tell you, Sancho, that a mouth without molars is like a mill without a millstone, and dentation is to be valued much more than diamonds." (p. 133)

"...for hope is always born at the same time as love.." (p. 288)

"The night, as we have said, was dark,..." (p. 141)

"...because all of them are judgments based on experience, the mother of all knowledge..." (p. 153)

The epic poems referenced:

"...the man who wishes to be known as prudent and long-suffering imitates Ulysses, in whose person and hardships Homer painted a living portrait of prudence and forbearance; Virgil, too, in the person of Aeneas, portrayed for us the valor of a devoted son and the sagacity of a valiant and experienced captain; they were depicted and described not as they were, but as they should have been, to serve as examples of virtue to men who came after them." (p. 193 - one of the reasons I stared my Epic, Epic Poetry Project back in 2024 was because of how these works echo in literature and thinking down through the centuries and ages and I was not surprised to encounter them again here.)

And referenced again:

"He can display the guile of Ulysses, the piety of Aeneas, the valor of Achilles, the misfortunes of Hector..." (p. 413)

And again:

"...and may those granted you in this life be as many as those of Nestor!” (p. 631).

"but what reason does your grace have for going crazy?...

The great achievement is to lose one’s reason for no reason, and to let my lady know that if I can do this without cause, what should I not do if there were cause?" (p. 194).

" 'I don’t know how that can be; the truth is, to my mind, there’s no better reading in the world; I have two or three of them, along with some other papers, and they really have put life into me, and not only me but other people, too. Because during the harvest, many of the harvesters gather here during their time off, and there’s always a few who know how to read, and one of them takes down one of those books, and more than thirty of us sit around him and listen to him read with so much pleasure that it saves us a thousand gray hairs;...' " (p. 267)

"Happy were those blessed times that lacked the horrifying fury of the diabolical instruments of artillery, whose inventor, in my opinion, is in hell, receiving the reward for his accursed invention, which allows an ignoble and cowardly hand to take the life of a valiant knight, so that not knowing how it comes, or from where, a stray shot is fired into the courage and spirit that inflame and animate a brave heart, sent by one who perhaps fled in fear at the bright flare when the damned machine discharged it, and it cuts off and ends in an instant the thoughts and life of one who deserved to enjoy many more long years." (pp. 332-333)

"...although considering Rocinante’s patience and passivity, one could reasonably expect him to stand for a century without moving." (p. 381)

This whole section:

"...and though I, moved by a false and idle taste, have read the beginning of almost every one that has ever been published, I have never been able to read any from beginning to end, because it seems to me they are all essentially the same, and one is no different from another. In my opinion, this kind of writing and composition belongs to the genre called Milesian tales...

...the principal aim of these books is to delight, I do not know how they can, being so full of so many excessively foolish elements; for delight conceived in the soul must arise from the beauty and harmony it sees or contemplates in the things that the eyes or the imagination place before it, and nothing that possesses ugliness and disorder can please us.

...those who compose these books write them as fictions, and therefore are not obliged to consider the fine points of truth, I should respond that the more truthful the fiction, the better it is, and the more probable and possible, the more pleasing. Fictional tales must engage the minds of those who read them, and by restraining exaggeration and moderating impossibility, they enthrall the spirit and thereby astonish, captivate, delight, and entertain, allowing wonder and joy to move together at the same pace..." (pp. 411-412)

"...but I also saw that the number of simpleminded men is greater than that of the prudent, and though it is better to be praised by a few wise men and mocked by many fools, I do not wish to subject myself to the confused judgment of the presumptuous mob, who tend to be the ones who read these books...

...Which means the fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else." (pp. 414-415)

"To which Sancho responded: “Housekeeper from hell..." (p. 469 - Here he is addressing said housekeeper. 😂)

"You are wrong, Sancho," said Don Quixote. "As the saying goes, Quando caput dolet—" "I don’t understand any language but my own,'"responded Sancho." (p. 470)

“Look, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “wherever extraordinary virtue resides, there it is persecuted. Very few, if any, of the famous men of the past escaped the slanders of the wicked. (p. 472).

There is no lord’s antechamber where one does not find a copy of Don Quixote: as soon as it is put down it is picked up again; some rush at it, and others ask for it. In short, this history is the most enjoyable and least harmful entertainment ever seen, because nowhere in it can one find even the semblance of an untruthful word or a less than Catholic thought. (p. 478)

Men who are famous for their talent, great poets, eminent historians, are always, or almost always, envied by those whose particular pleasure and entertainment is judging other people’s writings without ever having brought anything of their own into the light of day. (p. 479)

“Because of the proverb that says: ‘Whoever tries to conceal you, reveals you!’ Nobody does more than glance at the poor, but they look closely at the rich; if a rich man was once poor, that’s where the whispers and rumors begin, and the wicked murmurs of gossips who crowd the streets like swarms of bees.” (p. 489).

...for the person who possesses wealth is not made happy by having it but by spending it, and not spending it haphazardly but in knowing how to spend it well. (p. 494)

I have some guile in me, and a touch of cunning, but all of it is covered and concealed by the great cloak of my simplicity, which is always natural and never sly. (p. 505)

“Yes,” responded Sancho, “but I’ve heard that there are more friars in heaven than knights errant.” “That is true,” responded Don Quixote, “because the number of religious is greater than the number of knights.” (p. 508)

“Your grace should put that thought out of your mind,” replied Sancho, “and take my advice, which is never to interfere with actors, for they are favored people. I have seen an actor arrested for two deaths and then be released, and no fines. Your grace should know that since they are good-natured and give pleasure to people, everyone favors them, everyone protects and helps and admires them, especially if they’re in one of the royal companies with an official license, and all of them, or most of them, look like princes in their costumes and makeup.” (p. 525)

"...the great Homer did not write in Latin because he was Greek, and Virgil did not write in Greek because he was Latin. In short, all the ancient poets wrote in their mother tongues, and they did not look for foreign languages in order to declare the nobility of their ideas." (p. 556)

"Sancho Panza observed everything, and contemplated everything, and felt affection for everything." (p. 585)

“but I cannot understand or comprehend how, since the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God, you, who fear a lizard more than you fear Him, can know so much.” (p. 590)

“for there are some who exhaust themselves learning and investigating things that, once learned and investigated, do not matter in the slightest to the understanding or the memory.” (p. 601)

“Since I know you, Sancho,” responded Don Quixote, “I shall ignore your words.” (p. 612)

Don Quixote approached them, to the great sorrow of Sancho, who never liked to find himself involved in these kinds of situations. (p. 639)

"moreover, taking unjust revenge, and no revenge can be just, is directly contrary to the holy law we profess, which commands us to do good to our enemies and love those who hate us, a commandment that, although it seems somewhat difficult to obey, is not, except for those who care less for God than for the world, and more for the flesh than for the spirit..." (pp. 640-641)

“I will let myself,” responded Sancho in a fury, “but I want it to be with cleaner towels, and clearer water, and hands that aren’t so dirty, for there’s not so much difference between me and my master that they should wash him with angel water and me with the devil’s bleach." (p. 675)