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no risk  QUOTES

4 " I have come to realize that a person’s relationship with their career is no different than their relationship with their spouse. You wake up together. You go to sleep together. You live together. It is possible to stay in a relationship that is based on convenience, financial security, or necessity, as opposed to genuine passion or love. But chances are that if the relationship is not built on genuine passion and love, it will have some difficulty at some point in time. Chances are it will fall apart at some point in time. And even if you manage to make it work, it just doesn’t feel good every day to wake up and go to sleep with someone or something you are simply not passionate about.The other thing I have come to realize is perhaps even more important. They say that people are afraid to fail. The proverbial “they”. I don’t know who “they” are, but they say it… People are afraid to fail. Or so it goes. But I disagree. People may think they are afraid to fail. But they are not afraid of failure per se. They are actually only afraid that other people will see that they have failed. They are afraid of what other will think of their failure. People will take incredible chances when there is no risk of others witnessing their failure. It’s why people dance and sing in the shower. It is the fear of what others will think of their failure that leads to constraints. Despair. Even suicide. In my career, I have seen multiple friends and clients give up, I am certain, out of a perceived shame of what they must have thought others were thinking of their failures... But it is an objective, outright, and utterly useless hindrance. A hindrance to success. There is nothing constructive about it. It is a reflex to overcome.... Flukes aside, success requires total dedication. "

8 " Old Hubert must have had a premonition of his squalid demise. In October he said to me, ‘Forty-two years I’ve had this place. I’d really like to go back home, but I ain’t got the energy since my old girl died. And I can’t sell it the way it is now. But anyway before I hang my hat up I’d be curious to know what’s in that third cellar of mine.’

The third cellar has been walled up by order of the civil defence authorities after the floods of 1910. A double barrier of cemented bricks prevents the rising waters from invading the upper floors when flooding occurs. In the event of storms or blocked drains, the cellar acts as a regulatory overflow.

The weather was fine: no risk of drowning or any sudden emergency. There were five of us: Hubert, Gerard the painter, two regulars and myself. Old Marteau, the local builder, was upstairs with his gear, ready to repair the damage. We made a hole.

Our exploration took us sixty metres down a laboriously-faced vaulted corridor (it must have been an old thoroughfare). We were wading through a disgusting sludge. At the far
end, an impassable barrier of iron bars. The corridor continued beyond it, plunging downwards. In short, it was a kind of drain-trap.

That’s all. Nothing else. Disappointed, we retraced our steps. Old Hubert scanned the walls with his electric torch. Look! An opening. No, an alcove, with some wooden object that looks like a black statuette. I pick the thing up: it’s easily removable. I stick it under my arm. I told Hubert, ‘It’s of no interest. . .’ and kept this treasure for myself.

I gazed at it for hours on end, in private. So my deductions, my hunches were not mistaken: the Bièvre-Seine confluence was once the site where sorcerers and satanists must surely have gathered. And this kind of primitive magic, which the blacks of Central Africa practise today, was known here several centuries ago. The statuette had miraculously survived the onslaught of time: the well-known virtues of the waters of the Bièvre, so rich in tannin, had protected the wood from rotting, actually hardened, almost fossilized it. The object answered a purpose that was anything but aesthetic. Crudely carved, probably from heart of oak. The legs were slightly set apart, the arms detached from the body. No indication of gender. Four nails set in a triangle were planted in its chest. Two of them, corroded with rust, broke off at the wood’s surface all on their own. There was a spike sunk in each eye. The skull, like a salt cellar, had twenty-four holes in which little tufts of brown hair had been planted, fixed in place with wax, of which there were still some vestiges. I’ve kept quiet about my find. I’m biding my time. "

Jacques Yonnet , Paris Noir: The Secret History of a City