pessimism also has its own ontological argument: existence is that beyond which nothing worse can be conceived.

Knowledge exists in inverse proportion to meaning. ~

We are the species that has sacrificed breath for speech.

The more I talk to people, the less I see the point in conversation. I’ve often been in the midst of a conversation and have suddenly, unwillingly, been extracted mysteriously from it, as if I were observing the whole thing with a strange sense of detached melancholy, like an out-of-body experience.

There is a special kind of Purgatory that involves waiting for something not to happen.

that the whole book be called an Afterword, since none of it is important.

For optimists, the most perplexing question is how one becomes a pessimist – if one is not born one.

Askesis. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Contrary to what many may think, pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of training.

Self-Help. The moment you think you’re a pessimist is the moment you cease to be one.