Whether one showed you and execution or a little finger, you would extract an equally edifying thought from both of them, and would still be content. That's the way to get on in life.
It's good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.
Now that I have all the things I once thought would make me happy, they have little meaning for me. Experience, and not just a little heartache, has taught me money buys convenience and conveniences.
When I was 12 I made some little films with my friends. I tried to make gangster films, like Fantomas, but I remember being very disappointed with them. They weren't frightening at all. I'm sure they'd be very funny now.
But what a little I can get down into my pen of what is so vivid to my eyes, and not only to my eyes; also to some nervous fibre, or fanlike membrane in my species.
There are very few moments in a man's existence when he experiences so much ludicrous distress, or meets with so little charitable commiseration, as when he is in pursuit of his own hat.