The quote is first attributed to Shakespeare but his usage is not the one I’m referencing.

I tried to show that it’s possible to engage with the violence of the book and the incest of the book as two separate concerns, by engaging with one but not the other. In response, you’re challenging my motivations rather than challenging the separation I described as possible. That ends my engagement with your thread; be well.

It is good form to cite or at least indicate, with quotation marks, when quoting. If you meant not to reference the famous usage, to name the work is best, not least to establish relevance and avoid appearing pretentious.

You say you find the incest and the torture equally upsetting, then you justify one and indict the other. If you can't be consistent even in the scope of a single comment, or for that matter distinguish fiction from reality better than this, wise indeed you seek balm for your dismay over the book elsewhere than with me; I have only so much patience for patent nonsense these days.

> You say you find the incest and the torture equally upsetting

I presented no information whatsoever regarding my personal views on the violence. Perhaps you tried to infer my position from the verb “excuse” in the first sentence.

I inferred your position from your constant use of the first-person singular to describe it, across what must now be at least a dozen paragraphs. If you had meant something else, I assume you would have said so.

Oh, good grief, I wish I'd caught this while I still could delete my prior comment. You opened with

> The incest doesn't excuse the torture.

But that is not what I said. I said, in the comment of mine to which you first replied, that people excuse the torture, but not the incest, just as you have done.

I still can't figure out what you meant by "equally upsetting," but the basic issue is that we're talking past each other because you failed to apprehend my thesis and I was too busy to notice and call you on it right away. I hope this clears things up!