Frank Strada

“. . . I have gradually come to believe that what's written cannot simply be amended to suit some later preference and so I have decided this is the way I will go on, writing without amendments, transparently . . . as though any of what I wrote mattered in the slightest.”
― Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief

“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

“[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

“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