To write (this book), then, is to be forced to march through enemy territory, in the very area where loss prevails, beyond the protected domain that had been delimited by the act of localizing death elsewhere. It is to produce sentences with the lexicon of the mortal, in proximity to and even within the space of death. It is to practice the relation between enjoying and manipulating, in the in-between space where a loss (a lapse) of the production of goods creates an expectation (a belief) without appropriation but already grateful.

– Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life