Perfect love may cast our fear, but fear is remarkably potent in casting out love.

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years, two months and twelve days.

Daniel supposed he had a secret life. Most people did; it was hardly possible to live without one.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

It is surely unreasonable to credit that only one small star in the immensity of the universe is capable of developing and supporting intelligent life. But we shall not get to them and they will not come to us.

Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.