Quotes about Existence

Immortality,' said Crake, ' is a concept. If you take 'mortality' as being, not death, but the foreknowledge of it and the fear of it, then 'immortality' is the absence of such fear. Babies are immortal. Edit out the fear, and you'll be...

When they're gone out of his head, these words, they'll be gone, everywhere, forever. As if they had never been.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being.

You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?

Live in the present, make the most of it, it's all you've got.

I'm fine, said Pilar, for the moment. And the moment is the only time we can be fine in.

Yet each flower, each twig, each pebble, shines as though illuminated from within, as once before, on her first day in the Garden. It's the stress, it's the adrenalin, it's a chemical effect: she knows this well enough. But why is it built in? she thinks. Why are we designed to see the world as supremely beautiful just as we're about to be snuffed? Do rabbits feel the same as the fox teeth bite down on their necks? Is it mercy?

If there were no emptiness, there would be no life.

It's somewhat daunting to reflect that Hell is -- possibly -- the place where you are stuck in your own personal narrative for ever, and Heaven is -- possibly -- the place where you can ditch it, and take up wisdom instead.

The living bird is not its labeled bones.

I must admit it's a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn't: I'm saying nothing, you're hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.