John Dolan

“The American educational psychologist Patricia Alexander has expressed the view that fear paralyses and curiosity empowers. Accordingly, she reasons, we should always be more interested than afraid.”

“Our children form a large part of our Immortality Project. This is one of the reasons a child’s death cuts so deep; some of the future dies with them. Through them and their descendants, part of us lives on forever, just as it does in the friends we touch and the ripples our actions cause in the world. All these effects are conscripts, earthwork defences against the finality of extinction.”

“Desire is a chameleon.He blends into the brickwork and the rocks of those lanes and pathways down which we walk. He lurks like a highwayman at the crossroads of our lives, waiting to rob us of our reason.And he does so for sport.”

“Do you know, by the way, that German is the only language in the world that has a word for ‘pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’? Schadenfreude.”

“My job is to assist you in finding the answer that is right for you. Not the answer that would be right for me.”

“How often – I continue reflecting – is it that we see what we want to see, rather than what is really before our eyes. In the trade we call this confirmation bias, and our brains are riddled with it. We take a position on something and thereafter only see whatever confirms that position, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.”