The conversation was mesmerizing, not for its content but for the cadences of the talk, the rhythm we fell into when we were alone, now as before. Every conversation between friends or lovers creates its own easy or awkward rhythms, hidden talk that runs like a subterranean river under even the most banal exchange.

And death? I don't fear death. I dread the absence of it.

Is there any evidence to the contrary? I don't need certainty in order to act on a well-founded suspicion.

I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.

What we cannot remember, we must rediscover.

Consciousness," according to current scientific thought, was something the higher mammals had evolved in order to help them reproduce, much the way a garden slug secretes slime. It had no special ontological status. The "self" was a genetically modulated and biologically useful illusion.

Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that's why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.