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In the inn where they had just dined, they were drinking a muderously stron white liquor. Dubreilh had already set up his paraphernalia at one end of an oilcloth-covered table.
'Yes', Henri said. His eyes obediently followed the pencil point along red, yellow, and white lines. 'How can you choose between those little roads?'
'That's the fun of it'.
The fun of it, Henri thought, was seeing how perfectly the future followed your plans: every turn, every upgrade and downgrade, every hamlet was in its foreseen place. What security! You felt as if your life was a cocoon spun from within your own body. And yet the metamorphosis of printed words and lines into real roads, real houses, gave you what no man-made creation can give: reality.

from The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir