Brusc, simti un gust acru pe limba si crezu ca a sosit moartea. (...) era atent, zi de zi, la gustul mancarii, deoarece stia ca moartea se instaleaza… - László Krasznahorkai

at this point, we must refocus our attention on this, as fear is what defines human existence,
...you will see that fear is the deepest element that can be grasped in this organic and inorganic world, and there’s nothing else other than fear, because nothing else bears within it such dreadful strength

...there was Paradise, of which he was the only resident, while in the world, with humanity suspecting nothing, knowing nothing of this great situation, simply continuing on with life as normal, as if nothing in this heaven-sent world had happened with the Great Journey and the Great Discovery, the world just kept going on like before, and this is what Gagarin's nervous system couldn't bear, and this nervous system destroyed his organism too, in the last days he could no longer bear being alive, this became completely clear to me, he could bear it only with vodka...

as he noticed the feeble ticking of his watch, he suddenly realized that he had been escaping all his life, that life had been a constant escape, escape from meaninglessness into music, from music to guilt, from guilt and self-punishment into pure ratiocination, and finally escape from that too, that it was retreat after retreat, as if his guardian angel had, in his own peculiar fashion, been steering him to the antithesis of retreat, to an almost simple-minded acceptance of things as they were, at which point he understood that there was nothing to be understood, that if there was reason in the world it far transcended his own, and that therefore it was enough to notice and observe that which he actually possessed.