V.V. sought to express something, which <i>until</i> expressed had only a twilight being (or even none at all — nothing but the illusion of the backw… - Vladimir Nabokov

The square root of I is I.

Now, when it was too late, and Life's shops were closed, he regretted not having bought a certain book he had always wanted; never having gone through an earthquake, a fire, a train accident; never having seen Tatsienlu in Tibet, or heard blue magpies chattering in Chinese willows; not having spoken to that errant schoolgirl with shameless eyes, met one day in a lonely glade; not having laughed at the poor little joke of a shy ugly woman, when no one had laughed in the room; having missed trains, allusions, and opportunities; not having handed the penny he had in his pocket to that old street violinist playing to himself tremulously on a certain bleak day in a certain forgotten town.

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.