Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.

Personally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.

Nonexistence never hurt anyone. Existence hurts everyone.

Officially there are no fates worse than death. Unofficially, there is a profusion of such fates. For some people, just living with the thought that they will die is a fate worse than death itself.

To my mind, a well-developed sense of humor is the surest indication of a person's humanity, no matter how black and bitter that humor may be.

The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.

What we do, as a conscious species, is set markers for ourselves. Once we reach one marker, we advance to the next.