Good soldiers stay alive by being unsentimental and having a quick eye for the main chance. - Michael Shea

Is it not unsettling to consider the blind unlikelihoods that shape one’s fate?

I will be succinct, eschewing vainglorious hyperbole.

It is a bitter thing that each of us must finally be blown out like a candle, and have the unique ardor of his individual flame choked off, and sucked utterly away like smoke in the dark. Do we ever accept this in our hearts, any of us? The waste of knowledge! It never ceases to be...infuriating.