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

“Spiritual self-love, the pity that one feels for oneself, may perhaps be called egotism; but nothing could be more opposed to ordinary egoism. For this love or pity for yourself, this intense despair, bred of the consciousness that just as before you were born you were not, so after your death you will cease to be, will lead you to pity - that is, to love - all your fellows and brothers in this world of appearance, these unhappy shadows who pass from nothingness to nothingness, these sparks of consciousness which shine for a moment in the infinite and eternal darkness.”
― Miquel de Unamuno

“I would wish for my last day to involve an act of freedom - a walk by the ocean, a long bike ride, something I love. . . . Final acts acquire holiness. . . If finality makes something holy then every moment is holy, because every moment could be the last. . . . Live each day as if it's your last, we think, and then we don't.”
― 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