Frank Strada

“[The kids have] run around the grassy paths of their granddad's vegetable beds too many times. Let's play something, they say, but are out of ideas. . .

At that a tall figure appears in black with a scythe and says, I have a game.
Yeah?
Yeah. I won't tell you the rules, or what the aim of it is, but you have to play it anyway, and reside with the persistent feeling of playing it wrongly - though there are no rules and there is no aim - and when you have finished playing you will both die. OK?
Not really OK.
OK?
Not rea--
OK! Go, kids.
Off sloped the figure in black and the girl and boy, despite themselves, began to play the game for which there were no rules and no aim, because it seemed there was no choice.”
― Samantha Harvey, The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping

“To be utterly innocent would be to be utterly unknown, particularly to oneself.”
― Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

“The greatest tyranny of all is men's possession of women and women's possession of men. We want to own one another so that the other cannot outgrow us. You know how Chinese women bind their feet until the feet are deformed? This is what we do to one another's hearts.”
― Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief

“. . . the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.”
― George Eliot