Empty. Barren. These were the true conditions of the Universe, she thought; life, and variety, and energy… — Stephen Baxter

Maybe it’s time we humans abandoned our species-specific chauvinism—our petty outrage that the Universe has unfolded in a way that doesn’t suit us.

She tried, sometimes, to remember how it had been to be young. Or even, not quite so old.

Try to remember this lesson. It might keep you alive a little longer. The most precious thing to a human being is a mind-set: more precious than one’s own life, even. Human history has taught us that lesson time and again, with its endless parade of wars—human sacrifices en masse—thousands of deaths over the most trivial of differences of religious interpretation.