“There's nothing here.”

“There's nothing anywhere.”

Hell opened underneath us and there was no way to escape falling in.

People are always dying, in every moment, in this moment.

Inside the hull of the warship when the shell detonates.

Pieces, pieces, pieces...

...a philosophical indifference to existence...

Here, our gentleness is tough; our toughness is gentle.

Action so often accomplishes nothing.

It's best if at the end of the day one is sweaty and dirty.

I drink too much and yet not enough.

Have you been educated in the winding tunnels of mind-funking?

Literature is almost never polite.

I am a wintry soul.

No, I am a rainy soul. No, I am not a soul, without personhood. No, I am the only soul, the everything. But then what would that make you, if anything?

Accepting as foregone the conclusion that you are as hippie as hippie can be, which parts of your hippieness do you denounce? The general grunginess? The transience and shallow connectivity of hippie relationships? The non-productivity of the hippie lifestyle, while the squares grow the food and mend the roads and engineer the furnaces that we hippies survive by?

Do you live with guilt? Do you live with loneliness? Do you live with dirt? is I guess what I'm saying.

All experience is cosmically disappointing.

“Hi, my name is Radigan. My hobbies are embroidery, racecar driving, and heroin.”

There is no complete joy. Every joy is leavened by the immeasurable sadness of its ephemerality.

“What does it feel like to be a man?”
“Painful.”

Don't play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol.

I feel a great sadness for lives not lived. All the decisions made resulting in all the lives precluded...

We live in a harsh gleaming world, the noise is constant, and the light [I forgot the rest]

But got to be somewhere
And nowhere for too long

Nothing accomplished; nothing to be accomplished.

Orange!: blaze orange, fire orange, Buddhist orange, orangepeel orange, naranja.

flense the meat from my bones

“I'm really basically an artist. Which just means, I'm not socially useful.”

When you don't fit into your own culture, it is easy to not fit into other cultures.

J watches romantic comedy movies; he does not watch war movies because he has lived through war. I watch war movies; I do not watch romantic comedy movies because I have lived through romantic comedy.

While you may wish for many attributes, never wish for keenness of comprehension.

Grow old, become hairy.

pray to Satan, my Dark Lord

he doesn't exist, and you don't either

What you remember is what there was
What you perceive is what there is

the steering column through your chest cavity
You feel it only once

Baatar stepped his right foot to the edge, shifted his weight to his right foot and pivoted on his right foot. In his pivot, his gaze swept into the abyss that was now directly off his right boot and Baatar the Immortal Monster, the Slayer, the Will, the Psyche, the Lust for Living, the Hero of His Own Story, the Only Character in the Only Story, paused. Baatar paused and stared. The tip of his sword dipped to the stone floor. There was Nothing to be seen.

But something must matter, mustn't it? And I must care about something, mustn't I? I care about beauty, but surely beauty doesn't matter. I care about poetry. Nothing could matter less than poetry.

Intelligence cannot be faked. But I try.

Do coincidences mean anything to you? I'll offer: they mean nothing to me. No evidence of secret order to the universe, no guiding forces, no supernatural intelligences. The human mind, so successful at increasing the evolutionary adaptability of the human species because it is so adept at identifying patterns, is also so flawed by the same talent because it so often sees patterns where none exist.

But maybe you believe in Magic?

What a great love I once had.

What a common belief.

I like listening to the goings-on of the world at 2:30 at night.

Tell me about it, the loneliness of literature.

I do not recycle for the same reason that I do not play the lottery: because I understand mathematics.

The United States produces annually 254,000,000.00 short tons of garbage. One United States resident produces annually 0.84 short tons of garbage.(1)

For comparison, represent the garbage that one U.S. resident annually produces as one second. The garbage that the U.S. annually produces is then represented as nine and a half years. The difference that one second makes over a span of nine and a half years is incomprehensibly inconsequential. The garbage that any single U.S. resident produces is incomprehensibly inconsequential.

To act, one must be so vain as to believe that one's actions are of consequence; to recycle, you must believe that you make a difference, despite the mathematical truth that you do not make a difference.

Humans motivate their actions through egregious irrationality or outrageous vanity.

To be rational and undeluded about your relative value as a member of human society is to be philosophically closer to oblivion.

(1) United States Environmental Protection Agency, Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2007

Is it really okay? It's a missed connection, isn't it? It's a fear and a sadness, and a sense that each individual is not worth so very much, because there are so many individuals, and how to distinguish them?

People are generally not interested in other people, so to be forthcoming is to be boring, because no one really cares. At the same time, people are generally vain, so they like to be forthcoming. This means that people are generally boring to one another.

The most difficult thing about being alone is remaining alone; other people regularly challenge your aloneness.

Humans are not very interesting creatures. Their behavior is simple and repetitive, and established and basically unchangeable by the time they're eight years old.

I have a bad and worsening habit of ignoring people.

I have a good and improving habit of ignoring people.

What I write is not disturbing. Conscious existence is disturbing.

I don't understand other humans' emotions and motivations. I can perceive them and ape them and cognitively diagram them, but I can't overlook the pointlessness. These soft organic unhardy precariously organized creatures are going to die. They know they are going to die. Why do they not act like they are going to die?

I have a terminal condition. It is my life. Why does this condition bother me when the same condition does not bother you? You do not think about the circumscribed epoch of your life. I think about it.

Nothing exists beyond this moment, so nothing can be lost.

This is not a violent thing, at least no more than sex is a violent thing. Sex is a violent thing and the most tender of things.

I do not like religious fantasy, and all religious thought is fantasy.

You do not want to know my thoughts, you would not like them, you would never accept them, and, most hopeless of all, you could not understand them.

On every occasion, accept chewing gum when it is offered.

Maintain in your possession a tangible symbol of life yet to come. A train schedule, a folded map, an unopened condom—each in its iconization of promise may serve as a talisman against daily pain.

We don't bury goods with the dead; we keep those for the living. We don't believe in sentiment; we don't feel it. We don't lose time over emotion for there is only limited time for action. We don't weep, we don't agonize, we don't idealize; we kill whenever there is benefit in it. We eat you, because you are made of meat.

I like you because you don't know who I am.

Until every child already in existence lives without suffering, there is no justification for creating another child.

Everything at four o'clock a.m. is eerily beautiful.

The laughter of others reminds me that death is approaching.

Every laugh is a laugh in the face of death. A laugh is a rebuff of death. A laugh is wholly irrational, as life in an expanding, freezing, and dying universe is.

Death -- obliteration -- comes regardless.

...like almost everything else humans do, it's pointless.

I seek what is unfindable.

Theological noncognitivism: 'god' is an incomprehensible idea. How can something exist outside of the natural world, unmeasureable, unknowable, unperceivable, yet have an effect upon the natural world? It is incoherent. Yet there is something that exists with certainty outside of the natural world and has an effect upon the natural world: thought. So now the idea of 'god' is thinkable. And because all of the universe is created by the consciousness and exists only as thought, we have in fact found 'god the creator.' It is the ukhaan; it is I.

Choosing to not act is as worthy as choosing to act; choosing to cease is as worthy as choosing to live.

"The ineluctable destiny of each of us is to be forgotten."

Existence itself -- any kind of existence -- is horrific.

Pretending that the universe has meaning does give it meaning, but it is just pretend, but it is real, because reality is pretend.

I like soda pop with ice cubes late at night, movies on Saturday afternoon, and women who wear perfume.

I am not special; there are thousands identical to me. You are not special; there are thousands identical to you. But I held your head in my hands, and we were gentle, and the memory of that, lived or imagined, is the only thing that is real and certain and persisting, and important.

"I don't want your god; I would cut your god into steaks and eat him with horseradish."

Life is much easier if you don't have anything to do with other people.

accepting nothing
challenging the void itself to prove itself
and nothing to support him or catch him
spins through the void
true intellectual fortitude is required to embrace uncertainty
is independent, free in the world, and unconcerned with the ridiculousness that has come before

You see, the atheist derives childish reassurance from a logically unsupportable system of belief concerning the nature of existence, and in this way is no different from your average born-again Jesus-fellating Christian, secure in his “knowledge” of something that cannot be known, whereas the agnostic exhibits true intellectual fortitude through the difficult and uncomfortable acceptance of all-pervading uncertainty. The atheist mind rests untroubled in its cradle of certainty, spitting up all over logic and using rationalism as its diaper while cuddling self-satisfaction to its uncreased cheek, but the agnostic mind careens through the existential void at uncontrollable velocities in defiance of any effort to delimit what is and is not possible, demanding each viewpoint (including cherished atheism, precious and sacrosanct to the weaker minds) to prove itself, and remaining unsurprised though bemused as each fails, and the uncompromising agnostic mind rockets ever onward toward unknown destiny.

I remember.

You are but a muse to me; the world is unreal to me.

It doesn't have anything to do with intelligence; it has to do with existential indifference.

Much poetry that is designated as "poetry" is uncreative, uninteresting free verse; song lyrics, however, rigidly adhere to the poetic standards of rhyme and meter. Songwriter-as-poet and lyrics-as-poetry are particularly apparent in hip-hop or rap, with the musicality reduced to a minimum, and the merit of the art judged not on musicianship but on the imagery and poetry of the verse. Hip-hop is produced and is popular in what seems every language in the world. It's cool to be a "hip-hop artist;" it's dorky to be a "poet," but broad appreciation of evocative and linguistically acrobatic poetry is certain.

The only incontestable fact of existence: I cannot know whether I am alone.

In order to live, I must ignore the only incontestable fact of existence.

I like girls who know how to enjoy themselves. I love women who know how to enjoy men.

Now tell me something that you know you shouldn't tell me, but that you really want to tell me.

"Do you drink?"
"I should."

No! I want to wake up Sunday mornings in white sheets entwined with you.

No! I want to wake up face down in dusty alleys in Polynesia.

No. I do not want to wake up.

I enjoy general and specific perversion.

These moments, these moments, these moments.

You've had lovers, do you think about them?, are we not supposed to think about them?, then what are we to think about?, it's 6:30 AM.

Writing is a terrible thing.

Sitting alone in a room.

Talking to yourself.

One woman is more dangerous than a tumen of men.

I got a new ring. It's made of solid gold, covered in plastic.

It looks just like a plastic ring, but mine's made of solid gold.

Words, like life, have no meaning.

Where there is consciousness, there is a wish for eternal consciousness.

Passion fell upon me like an avalanche today, belaboring my breathing, crushing my clear head.

Life exists in the blur, in the fuzz at the edges. Life exists in the blur.

Life is too awful. Let's live in
the contemplated possibilities.

Politics is ephemeral.

Art, less so.

"I love you. Were that it enough."

Flipping the coin: 50% heads, 50% tails. No odds are given for the coin landing on its edge, yet sometimes it does.

The implications of philosophical truth are so horrifying that the human mind cannot comprehend them and remain sane.

Humans are irrational. You must be irrational to be conscious and to exist in a meaningless world.

She said, “I didn’t believe they would.”
She said, “I couldn’t believe they did.”

The more I think, the less human I become.

Why is this? Isn’t thinking exactly what distinguishes humans from everything else in existence?

This is what I am. And it is nothing.

I do not believe in the existence of other people, but I do not believe in the non-existence of other people, either. It is an inhuman way to live, but it is the only way that is logically consistent. Logic, it turns out, is not for humans.

“Did you ever have that happen where you’re sitting in front of the computer all day and then you go outside and you’re amazed by the resolution of everything? Like, ‘Wow! Look at the leaves on that tree!’”

“Yeah, the pixels in meatspace are really small.”

“Who are you?”
“I am nobody, and so are you.”

I am living vicariously through myself.

"Fun but pointless: I guess that pretty much sums it up. In fact, I guess that pretty much sums up existence."

Ambition poisons a life.

I want to be the white whale, a solitary whale, alone and roaming a wide world, eating my squid.

Nationalism encourages war. Do not associate yourself with any nation; associate yourself only with humanity.

Yes, I think in language. Yes, I organize all of reality in language. Yes, I exist in language. But language is not my existence.

There is only one story. That is the story of my life, this life, the life.

“You shouldn’t be here.”
“I shouldn’t be anywhere.”

“Did you sleep well?”
“Never.”

Humans really like killing each other. They do it again and again, on massive scales. Humans do not like being killed and they do not like those humans to whom they are close being killed. This is a paradox.

Everything goes away. Life __ death. Everything __ fine __ pain __ dead __ goes away.

I cannot go to bed. I am never done with the night.

The white whale weighs on my mind.

"We all have our little ideas about what life is. If we don’t have those ideas, we don’t go on living."

The weak die. The strong die also.

Entropy is constantly grinding each of us to nothingness, but it grinds down some of us so much sooner than others, whether it is that we begin with so much less energy, or that entropy grinds us down at such a higher rate, or some sum of these.

Our great unanswered mystery of philosophy, medicine, neuroscience, psychology: how is it that an immaterial thing—consciousness—can act upon, and be acted upon by, a material universe? How can the immaterial and the material causally interact?

One resolution: the perceived material universe is immaterial, for it exists only within the immaterial consciousness. For example: I am a Boltzmann brain, and all of my perceived reality is in fact imagined by me and therefore immaterial; my consciousness can interact with this perceived reality unparadoxically because there is no interaction between the immaterial and the material: my immaterial consciousness is interacting only with itself. The true material reality of the Boltzmann brain that gives rise to my consciousness is unperceived—and perhaps unperceivable—by my consciousness.

The Internet might already be conscious, in a way that we cannot conceive. It might not be able to comprehend, relate to, or communicate with us, just as I cannot comprehend, relate to, or communicate with the neurons of my brain.

Imagine the Internet believing itself to exist in a material universe, but that universe in fact existing only immaterially within the Internet. This is analogous to me as a Boltzmann brain believing myself to exist in a material universe, but that universe in fact existing only immaterially within my consciousness.

Death is not evil, it is not malignant; it is indifferent.

“Honor will not change our fate. Nothing will change our fate.”

“She’s allergic to garlic.”

“That bloodsucking, nightwalking bitch!”

“I will be dead, and you will hear about it, and you will think, ‘It was a tragedy that he ever lived.’”

"Ha ha. You ask me whether a story actually happened? I tell you, I am not certain and cannot be certain whether any event has ever occurred. You ask me whether I invented a story? I tell you, I have a suspicion that I am inventing everything, including you, but of the validity of this suspicion I am not certain, and--and this is the important part--I cannot be certain."

“We be in Hell, and he be the Devil.”

“If we be in Hell, then those be demons,” and he gestured at the hundreds of winking glowering eyes in the crimson dark surrounding them. Then nodding at the sleeping form of Baatar, “And he be the angel conducting us through them.”

no fear of death, no hope for immortality

“And it doesn’t happen. Nothing happens. Life doesn’t happen.”

“Black is the color of space; black is the absence of light.”

“Writing things down is civilization. It is how the living receive ideas from each other and from the dead; it is how the living pass on ideas to each other and to the unborn.”

"Where are you going with your life? Here, do you see this? This is my life. ...If I am alive in twenty-nineteen, this is what I will be doing. It does not matter who else is alive at that time. It does not matter if I am the only one alive at that time. It does not matter if I am limbless, sightless, whatever. This is what I will be doing."

"...This is a chart of thoughts."

"These are thoughts that need to be thought out."

"What is this column of numbers?"

"The mythical birth of some hippie in a desert is not the beginning of time for me. This system begins time from the date of my first recorded thought, which corresponds to nineteen-eighty-eight in this Christian system."

"...This goes on for a hundred years. Do you think you're going to live to a hundred and thirty?"

"If I am alive in twenty-one-oh-eight, this is what I will be doing. I don't know if I will be alive in twenty-one-oh-eight, and I don't know if I'll be alive in twenty-oh-nine, but if I am, this is what I will be doing."

"...You think so differently from other people."

"I think. I wonder whether other people think."

"You are such an asshole."

"I plainly am not and cannot be certain whether other people think."

"Because you are a solipsist."

"Because I am the Solipsist. Logic concludes that there is only one for certain."

She was crying again.

“I’ve just never had any use for people. And people get angry when you don’t have any use for them.”

Nocturnal in habit, and thought.

Nobody is interested in my stuff more than I am, and I am not interested in anybody's stuff more than my own.

This is what life is: creating a world for oneself.

Dreams forgotten before you awakened

Each of the humans displayed a facial expression when reading the Black Stone. Each expression was different. Some of the expressions displayed the human’s thoughts and emotions; some of the expressions concealed the human’s thoughts and emotions.

“I’m not happy here. But that doesn’t mean anything. I’m not happy anywhere.”

The imminence of death renders all ambition as foolishness.

...nothing so noble as a good speech well delivered, a good poem well recited, or a good joke well told.

And we want to believe there is something, and there's nothing, there's nothing.

It is uncommon for an animal to destroy itself. It is common for a human to destroy itself. What differentiates an animal from a human? A human is capable of philosophically examining the phenomenon of existence. Though hindered by an animal-like lust for survival, a human can comprehend the vanity of existence.

Can I carry my heart in a bag, and throw it into a river?

The trauma makes you not feel safe anymore. But you shouldn’t feel safe. You’re not.

He saw the God, the Creator, the Merciful and Unmerciful, the Terrible, the Loving, the All-Mighty Devilish Unimaginable Horror. He saw the Power emanating from the Center, permeating into the Everywhere.

He saw nothing.

“She could be like, ‘Radigan, I had sex with—’ No, she would say, ‘Rad-ee-gan?’ And I would say, ‘**-**-***?’ And she would giggle. So she could be like, ‘Rad-ee-gan, I had sex with the air force.’ And I would be like, ‘I forgive you, Baby.’”

“That good?”

“That good.”

“So what happened?”

“What always happens.”

Do not try to hold onto what you have, because you have nothing.

The story of every human life is a tragedy.

"A popular social philosopher wrote, 'You show me the people who control the money, the land, and the weapons, and I’ll show you the people in charge.' Everyone at this party is a member of American society. Is anyone at this party in charge of American society? No. They are here pursuing their petty pleasures. Next workday morn, they will go back to their petty roles in support of the people in charge, insensible to the suffering that their society causes in faraway deserts. Little Eichmanns we are, and grotesque is our merry-making."

Today, tomorrow, forever.

You don't know me. You have dreams of me. I am monstrous. Humans are monstrous.

Suicide is an aspect of the human condition whose exploration cannot be exhausted.

I am edgily Buddhist. Life is suffering. Desire is the source of all suffering. The only way to be free of suffering is to give up desire.

I abandon. I walk away. I don't know of anything that I have ever had that I believed was worth the effort.

There is no meaning nor purpose to existence. You must create meaning or purpose for your life. But any meaning or purpose that you create for yourself is only just that: created. It is imaginary.

You almost died, and you didn’t, but it does not matter. If you had died, it would not have mattered. It would have mattered to a few people, oh so very few people, for only a little while, such a little while. And then they would exist without you. And everything would exist without you. And it doesn’t matter. You will still die anyway. And everything and everyone will exist without you.

We live by our thoughts.

I don’t remember life. It’s something that happened between breakfast and another breakfast.

I am not an entertainer. I do not care whether you are entertained by my writing. I am presenting ideas.

The greatest horror of the Holocaust is that it will be repeated.

. . . on larger and larger scales, for as long as humans exist.

Life hasn’t even begun yet. Everything that came before: nothing to what is yet to come.

I’d like to support those kinds of books, the kind that could never be popular, the kind that cut you when you pick them up.

The wine glass slid off the bar and onto the floor and shattered. I could only look at it. Another broken glass. How many glasses had I broken in my life?

Whatever you think is so great, isn’t.

Whatever else we are, we are petty little bastards, and we will forever hopelessly be that way.

I am not a part of a country, I am a part of humanity. I do not care about the fate of the United States or Mongolia or any other ephemeral nation, culture, group. My aspirations are for all of humanity.

Everyone is expendable, everyone is replaceable.

The only one whose existence is important is the ukhaan (the self, the one, the consciousness), and the only one to whom the ukhaan’s existence is important is the ukhaan.

A conscious entity is not and cannot be certain whether anything other than itself exists.

Yes, you can go about living your life just fine without thinking about this.

But if you do think about this, you cannot go about living your life just fine.

Paradox, anomy, horror: conscious existence can only be endured through willfully ignoring the only knowable characteristic of conscious existence.

Awareness of existence is disturbing.

To do anything requires the destruction of me.

The best stories I have encountered... are about meaninglessness, anomy, universal arbitrariness... and occasional human cruelty, human insanity in the face of that.

No, not sick; in poor health.

No, not in poor health; in a bad way.

“It is original. There is nothing else like it. I know. I have been searching my whole life.”

I don’t feel that I’m even writing for humans. Humans are too ensconced in the viscerality of their physical existences: humans are eating, defecating, copulating animals, and as such, might ever be lackadaisical in the contemplation of the nature of consciousness. But the future consciousnesses, existing in digital worlds, freed from the distractions and limitations of flesh-prisons, abstract and pure, might be given to exploring the fundamental questions of mind and existence. Maybe I’m writing for them.

Stories of redemption are the most obscene of fantasies, the fiction furthest from truth. Every act that has been committed will always have been committed. Death is the only end to every story.

The tragedy is not that existence is arbitrary; the tragedy is that you ever became aware of existence in the first place.

On Creating Children:

1) The human race does not need to persist. The human race cannot persist indefinitely; it will conclude. Whether that conclusion comes in the next generation or in one hundred generations is immaterial. 2) If there is concern for the persistence of the human race into another generation (though such concern can only be arbitrary and delusionary), it is not my responsibility to address that concern.

I am composed mainly of dissipation.

“Who are you?”
“I am.”

Uh-huh, I see. Have you read my book? It explains everything.

Of course everything is not okay. Everything is never okay. Everything can never be okay.

...just how self-absorbed everyone is. ... Ha, ha, “self-absorbed.” That is humorful because, in a literal sense, no one can be as self-absorbed as me, who doubts logically the existence of anything other than me. A distinction between everyone else and myself is that I do not believe that my chief interest—my self—is of interest to anyone other than myself. Why do I write? It is not to shock anyone with the comprehension of the very real possibility that I might be the only thing that exists; it is to shock someone with the comprehension of the very real possibility that she or he might be the only thing that exists.

What is even more shocking, indeed debilitating? The comprehension of the intractable fact that I do not and cannot know whether I am the only thing that exists. Is not the absoluteness of uncertainty terrifying? If you have faith in the existence of something—anything—beyond yourself, then this question does not apply to you. But if you are mercilessly rational, then the hopelessness of all-pervading unknowability must catch up with you. Faith is for the weak-minded. But who is strong-minded enough to accept knowledgelessness and unknowability? Baatar, the impossible hero of The Steppe, is sufficiently strong-minded... Baatar, who is, in all outward appearances, insane...

There is something wrong with life.

The question is not why did I forego the celebration. The question is why have I not shot myself in the head. We can argue that suicide is the assumption of responsibility for the circumstances and timing of your own death. How can we be content to leave the event of death to happenstance?

For how long will I continue to endure consciousness? Why have I endured consciousness this long?

There is the Skepticist/Baatarist dilemma that I cannot be certain whether my consciousness will end with the gunblast. To destroy my brain in the hope of ending my ukhaan would be to give in to irrationality, to place faith in the unprovable superstition that the perceived functioning constitution of seemingly material neurology is the source of consciousness. All that is and can be certain is that my ukhaan exists now. Such is the nature of existence, of life, of consciousness.

I’m not interested in creating literature; I’m writing the bible.

If you live, you are mine. If you think, your thoughts belong to me.

The application of reason is hopeless.

“Two things cannot!” She looked down at the table. “Bread and water cannot share the same space.”
“Yes they can. It’s called soggy bread.”
“Earth and air cannot share the same space.”
“Yes they can. It’s called a duststorm.”
She stepped closer to me. “Two people cannot share the same space.”
“That’s called sex,” I said.
“You are wrong. Water cannot be a part of bread. Earth cannot be a part of air. You cannot be a part of me.”
“I’ll prove it to you,” I said. I cupped the base of her skull in my hand and closed her hair in my fist.

He went straight to the microwave. He opened the door of the microwave and pulled out the cat and dropped it to the floor. He crushed the cat’s skull under his bootheel, ending the beast’s misery as quickly as possible. He hadn’t noticed yet that he had burned both of his hands when he had grabbed the cat. He was furious.

I'm not all here. I'm in little scattered pieces.

Acceptance of the Bundle Theory of Personhood eradicates any fear of death, for if death is occurring in every moment, then the final death is no change of state. Acceptance of the Bundle Theory of Personhood also eradicates any motivation to action, for if death is occurring in every moment, then what can ever be achieved?

What you term “success” is wholly the inducement of other people to give you things: to give you money, to give you love, to give you recognition. But what if other people do not exist?

You live in a world where you can’t see death coming, but it is coming.

If I had dreams, they would be of you.

No one cheers when the sun rises.

“Does he not care about other people because he doubts their existence, or does he doubt the existence of other people because he does not care about them?”

I am confident that I am producing works that will be read as long as there are consciousnesses, human or otherwise.

Suffering is ingenerate in human life; suffering is ingenerate in consciousness.

I do not feel loss for what I do not have, and I have nothing. Death is no cause for dole, because it is only the loss of time--potential time--time that does not belong to me now and is not and cannot be promised to me.

“No, no, I wouldn’t bother with that. If I liked you, I would simply seduce you.”
“Oh really? Just like that, huh? You think it would be so easy?”
“Well, if success were guaranteed, it wouldn’t be much fun, would it?” she said to me.

We do what we must to survive. But why? Why is survival so all-important? No, I do not have to do what I have little desire to do. I can just die.

The inquiry reveals as much about the inquirer as the response reveals about the respondent.

But so many years have burned away, and so many bad things have happened that never needed to happen, and the bad things will continue to happen.

I don’t believe in everlasting love, unless it can be known only as everlasting pain. I don’t believe in love, but I believe in women who believe in love.

Other humans might exist as conscious entities, or they might not. But the crux—the crippling, debilitating crux—is that I do not and cannot know whether other humans exist as conscious entities. They might, or they might not, but I—by dint of simply being conscious—exist in unresolvable uncertainty.

Skepticism is primary to all Western philosophy, Ancient and Modern: in Ancient times, beginning with the Greek Skeptics; in Modern times, beginning with Rene Descartes. Yet despite the fundamental nature of Skepticism to Western philosophy, the ideas and—especially—the implications of Skepticism remain alien to most humans, non-Westerners and Westerners alike.

But not to me. They strangle my mind. They are best represented by monsters.

I am unconvinced and inconvincible that other humans exist as conscious entities. That rather hampers interpersonal relations.

As technology makes perfectly simulated virtual universes a fact, the most vital human intellectual endeavor is inquiry into how a conscious mind can discern a physical universe.

The notion that one might be the only conscious mind in existence, known as the “Problem of Other Minds” in the Western philosophical tradition, known to Western psychology as “Solipsism Syndrome,” is abhorrently alien to any human who lives with other humans, as almost all humans do. Yet this same notion is so natural to any human in solitude that it is a primary concern of space agency research into how humans can live in vast, empty, extraterrestrial landscapes.

The Steppe is an exploration of the horror and glory of a human accepting that which is humanly unacceptable, yet logically undeniable.

I am here, wracked, my body rotting out from under me... All is pain...

"Do you believe in eternity?"
"No."
"Do you believe in death?"
"No."
"That's rather paradoxical."
"Isn't it, though?"

Have no fear of the solitude.

Fear the creatures.

There're always expectations. But never hopes. All is hopeless.

Whence to where?

The rats, the pigeons, the roaches, and the humans persist.

I grew up on a farm in North Dakota. By the time I was 16 years old, I had killed more wild animals than most humans will see in their lives.

The ukhaan exists now...horror and glory.

Nothing matters. To invest time and energy into anything is only to waste time and energy.

Philosophy is everything.
Physics is everything.
Chemistry is everything.
Biology is everything.
Mathematics is everything.
Engineering is everything.

Everything is marketing.

I do not eat, I do not sleep; I do not understand how it is that I continue to exist as I do.

I do not wonder that I am not loved. To be loved, one must love. To love is too high a price to pay to be loved.

July is the worst month. Everything happens in July.

You do not care about what I think. You care about what I can make you think.

There is something I must comprehend, and yet it is incomprehensible.

I contemplate existence and am horrified.

“Man is horrific enough to man; there is no need to invent horrors.”
“I do not invent horrors; I describe them.”

Whatever was, is not now.

Life is a death sentence.

Have you ever found yourself alive, and been surprised? That happens to me, every moment.

There is no and can be no “insanity.” The idea of “insanity” is that your reality differs from a consensus reality. But if you cannot be certain—and you cannot be certain—that a consensus reality exists, because you cannot be certain that other ukhaans exist, then the existence of your reality is of primary importance and whether your reality corresponds with any other reality that may or may not exist is of no importance. My reality is reality, and this is not an esoteric, obscure, off-the-wall idea; it is derived from humanity’s most basic philosophical ponderings, our first recorded inquiries into the nature of consciousness, our first questions of what it is to be alive.

The answer is that to be alive is to be alone.

To create art means that some people will love you, and some people will hate you. But just as the desire for love is no reason to create art, the fear of hate is no reason to not create art.

There is no construction nor destruction, no creation nor depletion; there is only existence.

The great darkness said: “I am the crush of all things.”
Baatar replied: “You cannot be, for I am the crush of all things.”

The night is waiting on you.

“The universe exists within my thoughts; within my thoughts is the only place the universe exits with certainty. I can create any thought: I can create anything in the universe. I can create entire universes. I am ‘God;’ I am the only god.”

Why do people live though they know they will die?

The most visited country in the world is France. French culture, lifestyle, food, etc. is so unique—so famously French. It is a curious example of cultural tourism in a developed, industrialized country. A friend of mine once pointed out that because tourism based on the uniqueness of the culture is the largest French industry, it can be argued that the job of every French person is simply to be French. The most valuable commodity that France produces is Frenchness.

Encouraging/disturbing possibilities exist.

Life is not keen; life is not kind; life is not warm; life is not gentle. Women are.

Live for action or live for comfort.

Action will bring comfort.

"We must give up all that we love in order to be free. ...I love you."

The pressure of the blood in the arteries and the veins of her body dropped at the comprehension of his meaning.

His finger squeezed on the trigger, the hammer fell on the firing pin, the powder ignited, the bullet spun through the barrel, the air popped. A great portion of her head disassembled, her heart pumped furiously, then stilled.

Faster than time flying

Give me a fast horse, and let me ride.

Ego makes a human great; suppression of ego makes humanity great.

I remember now that ideas are all that interest me.

How do you live with destiny?

I have defeated death. I have defeated it forever. I have defeated it because I am not dead right now. For this moment, I am alive. I will always have been alive in this moment.

A Canadian Abroad

“Where are you from?”
“Canada.”
“Oh. Where is that, is that in Europe?”
“No, it’s in North America.”
“Oh, you are American!”
“No, I’m Canadian!”
“Oh. So, that is a state, as Texas?”
“No, it’s a different country.”
“Different from America?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Then why are you not different from an American?”

I have to fight anomy daily, hourly, momentarily. Till now I realize: anomy is an identity. It is a purpose. It is a path to glory, and enlightenment, and happiness.

War will continue to be fought; the poor will continue to die in war, and the rich will continue to benefit from war.

Momentous things are happening in the world. If nothing else, I am living.

I am the wind. I’m leaving my work tonight and riding into the darkness.

I have fear of my own fearlessness.

Well, I survived. I never expected this, but here I am. I’m still alive.

“Europe” as a geological continent does not exist. There is a European peninsula, and it is culturally and ethnically distinct from the rest of humanity. The Europeans are the ones who eat all the potatoes.

In my young mind, Moscow was so far away. Now, can it be, I’ve already lived there?

There’s another world out there.
Another world to live in.
Another life.
It must be sought. It lies beyond comfort and electric light and canned humor and convenient love and machines and exercise and sofas and pretzels and home and family and smiles.

Ants will die and ants will be heroic and ants will continue to work. But they're still just ants. I want ants who do not just desire to be good ants, but who dare to be more than just ants. I want to find greatness.

Pleasure is for the weak and foolish.

You live with the knowledge of your own death. You are living in the face of annihilation.

So I’ve been thinking I should really get into heroin. Think about it: the most intense pleasure a human can ever experience. It’s actually rather depressing to think about. No matter whatever else one does, it could never bring as much pleasure – and pure, real, honest, sensual, unambiguous pleasure at that – as a hit of heroin. Sure, maybe you’ve had sex with the most highly trained and talented prostitutes in the world; okay, maybe you’ve piloted an advanced jet beyond the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and into the nascent fringes of space; why not? maybe you’ve held your newborn son for the first time – but have you ever tried heroin? Nothing can compare. How could anything compare with every pleasure receptor in your brain orgasming at once?

I was telling all this to ------ a while ago and she started crying and begging me not to get into heroin, and made me promise that I wouldn’t.

But, see, I know that she only reacted that way because she loves me, and love is such a selfish thing. It’s not so much that she’s concerned for my welfare, but that she’s worried that if I were removed from her life that it would make her sad. And that’s lame. She just can’t find happiness in the fact that I could experience as much pleasure as is humanly possible, far more so than is ever attainable in humdrum day-to-day existence. The most difficult thing to procure in pursuit of one’s dreams is never the money nor the time, but the support of one’s loved ones. Sure, maybe I’ll pay a little for it, but wouldn’t *the most intense pleasure a human being can experience* be worth a little discomfort and pain? And besides, I don’t think that for a person like myself it is such a big sacrifice, since personally I’ve never been real big on showering and neurotically compulsive bowel control anyway. And could any human pain be less bearable than the crushing pain of daily mundanity?

To be anchored to no one thing in particular must then make you relevant to all, aye? So you do not define (confine?) yourself by years, geography, knowledge, wealth, prestige -- but you have only been able to do so now that you have more than enough of each, enough so that you can now decide how much or little is important. But where were you before you had control of assets sufficient to free you from their associated ambitions and influences?--were you as certain of the core of yourself then? And, the more important corollary: where will you be when you face the total loss of your confidence-endowing wealth and power, such as when death approaches--will your identity still be as firm within yourself? Can you say for certain whether the bolsters of your identity originate mainly from within yourself, or do they support you from the outside world from which you so wish to distinguish yourself?

If only time would heal, as it is reputed to do. But even as the years pass by, the wounded flesh still hangs in ragged strips from my bones, and my heart still refuses to beat.

To the sea, to the highway, to the wild, to the world, to life. I couldn’t say for what other reason I could have been on this train, on this night...

I desire. . .

to be forgotten! To deny my existence to the rest of this humanity; they are not worthy of me.

I never expected to be this old.

Shouting into the wind, “You cannot end me! Only I can end me!”

“Oh Juliana, Juliana, let down your long hair, that I may climb up and suffer your dandruff.”

Hypocrisy lets us know we're thinking in new directions.

I am king. I, you, all are king.

There exist phenomena within the universe that language is hard-pressed to describe.

Is it a greater feat to harness the godly energy within the mortal human and attack the world, or to consume the soul’s impetus and aspire to a quiet fate?

The event in itself is neutral. Significance can only be attributed to it by an observer.

Happiness is only one of many values that an individual might use to judge the quality or success of one’s own life. I think I have discovered that my top value is intensity.