" ...It has always seemed to me that one of the more deplorable aspects of dying, aside from the terror, pain and filth, is the fact that when I am gone there will be no one here to register the world in just the way that I do. Don't misunderstand me. I have no illusions about my significance in the torrid scheme of things. Others will register other versions of the world, countless billions of them, a welter of worlds particular each to each, but the one that I shall have made merely by my brief presence in it will be lost for ever. "

― John Banville