For the man in the paddock, whose duty it is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses.  To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hot turds is a piece of imbecility.  A man can get to love shit if his livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.

But I don’t ask to go back to America, to be put in the double harness again, to work the treadmill.  No, I prefer to be a poor man of Europe.  God knows, I am poor enough; it only remains to be a man.

They have a wonderful therapeutic effect upon me, these catastrophes which I proofread.  Imagine a state of perfect immunity, a charmed existence, a life of absolute security in the midst of poison bacilli.  Nothing touches me, neither earthquakes nor explosions nor riots nor famine nor collisions nor wars nor revolutions.  I am inoculated against every disease, every calamity, every sorrow and misery.  It’s the culmination of a life of fortitude.  Seated at my little niche all the poisons which the world gives off each day pass through my hands.  Not even a fingernail gets stained.  I am absolutely immune.  I am even better off than a laboratory attendant, because there are no bad odors here, just the smell of lead burning.  The world can blow up–I’ll be here just the same to put in a comma or a semicolon.  I may even touch a little overtime, for with an event like that there’s bound to be a final extra.  When the world blows up and the final edition has gone to press the proofreaders will quietly gather up all the commas, semicolons, hyphens, asterisks, brackets, parentheses, periods, exclamation marks, etc. and put them in a little box over the editorial chair.  Comme ça tout est réglé...

A world without hope, but no despair.