brace yourself for a lot of Nabokov quotes :)
There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known -
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.
There was the day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity: How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom
Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb?
--"Pale Fire," Canto II, lines 167-182