Fight it out (Raymond)

You can go on for a long time explaining what life means to people, but do you still not understand that you're never going to get out of this alive?

To be an animal that thinks persistently in terms way beyond its lifespan sets us a frightful problem. Every day you amass knowledge in a frantic race against death that death must win. You want to find out everything in the time you have; yet in the end you wonder why you bothered, it'll all be lost.

The ordeal the writer sets himself is to track down existence and then, both stripped naked, fight it out.

Derek Raymond, from He Died with His Eyes Open