“Well, the beliefs that one most cherishes one is least willing to test. I do not go in at that open door. But lingering, but reluctant, is my tread as I pass by it; and I pause to bathe in the light [from the open door] that is as the span of our human life, granted between one great darkness and another.”—Max Beerbohm, “The Golden Drugget,” 1918
“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.”—Vladimir Nabokov; Speak, Memory, 1947