Survivors do not mourn together. They each mourn alone, even when in the same place. Grief is the most solitary of all feelings. Grief isolates, and … - Steven Erikson

Grief isolates, and every ritual, every gesture, every embrace, is a hopeless effort to break through that isolation. None of it works. The forms crumble and dissolve. To face death is to stand alone.

We are sickened by the unknown, but knowledge can prove poisonous.

Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’

‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’

‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’

‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’

‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.

I warn you all, hatred is finding fertile soil within me. And in your compassion, in your every good intention, you nurture it.