"“The fate of sentient life itself sometimes seems to me to be at stake. Yet do I fear? No, I think not. I place no special value upon sentience. I’d as cheerfully become a tree!” “Who’s to say they are not sentient?” Corum smiled as he set a pan upon the fire and began to lay strips of meat in the slowly boiling water. “Well, then, a block of marble.” “Again, we do not know…” Corum began, but Jhary cut him short with a snort of impatience. “I’ll not play such childish games!” “You misunderstand me. You have touched on a subject I have been considering only lately, you see. I, too, am beginning to realize that there is no special value to being, as it were, able to think. Indeed, one can see many disadvantages. The whole condition of mortals is created by their ability to analyze the universe and their inability to understand it.”"