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 upright 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?

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.

Full burn.

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.

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?