Poor Things

by Alasdair Gray

KINDS OF PEOPLE—“There are three kinds of people. The happiest are the innocent who think everyone and everything basically good. Many children are like that and so were you until Hooker (very much against my will) showed you otherwise. The second and biggest kind are half-baked optimists: people with a mental conjuring trick which lets them look at hunger or mutilation without discomfort. They think the wretched deserve to suffer, or that their nation is curing—not causing—these miseries, or that God, Nature, History will make everything right one day. Doctor Hooker is one of that sort and I am glad his rhetoric did not blind you to the facts. The third and rarest sort know human life is an essentially painful disease which only death can cure. We have the strength to live consciously among those who live blindly. We are the cynics.” “There must be a fourth kind,” I said, “because I am no longer innocent and hate what Dr. Hooker and what you think equally.” “That is because you are searching for a way which does not exist.” “I will search as long as I live rather than be a childish fool or selfish optimist or equally selfish cynic,” I told him, “and I will make my husband a searcher too.” “You will be a tiresome couple.”