Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) was a Spanish novelist, playwright and poet. As a soldier he was wounded at the Battle of Lepanto (1571), losing the use of his left hand, and was later held captive for five years in Algiers. He worked as a tax collector and commissary and was jailed more than once over accounts before achieving fame with Don Quixote. He also wrote the Exemplary Novels (1613) and the posthumous Persiles and Sigismunda.
“In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing”
“In short, he became so absorbed in his books that he spent his nights from sunset to sunrise, and his days from dawn to dark, poring over them; and what with little sleep and much reading his brains got so dry that he lost his wits”
“Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves”
The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha was published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. An impoverished hidalgo of about fifty, Alonso Quixano, reads chivalric romances until, from too little sleep and too much reading, his brain dries up and he loses his wits.
