The cradle rocks above an abyss, and our common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred beats and hour).

-  Vladmir Nabokov in “Speak, Memory” – Chapter 1.

See also Afterlife.