The Trouble with Being Born

by Emil M. Cioran

We do not rush toward death, we flee the catastrophe of birth, survivors struggling to forget it. Fear of death is merely the projection into the future of a fear which dates back to our first moment of life.

I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass—which is better than trying to fill them.

I long to be free—desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

“What do you do from morning to night?” “I endure myself.”