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I have no manuscripts, no notebooks, no archives.  I have no handwriting, for I never write.  I alone in Russia work with my voice, while all around me consummate swine are writing.  What the hell kind of writer am I?  Get out, you idiots!  

Nevertheless, I have many pencils, of various colors and all of them stolen.  They can be sharpened by a Gillette razor blade.  

The Gillette razor blade with its sharp, barely serrated edge has always seemed to me one of the noblest products of the steel industry.  A good Gillette blade cuts like sedgegrass, bends but does not break on one's hand.  It is like a Martian's calling card or a memo from a dapper devil with a hole pierced through its middle.

The Gillette razor blade is the product of the Death Trust whose shareholders include packs of American and Swedish wolves.  

--osip mandelstam [the fourth prose, translated by jane gary harris & constance link; osip mandelstam: complete critical prose; ardis, 1997]