Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother’s rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With...

I wait, you play. You speak, I cave. I promise, you break. You game me, daily, you play me.

He cared less, so they cared more. He said it was beautiful. I knew he was broken.This was his game.

Tricks ripped and you tripped, tricked yourself by falling slowly.I’m the winner in this game,unable to stoop to your level of shame.Unwilling to reply to your words of ache.

You either learn to play hard ball or you become the ball.

Of course. I died today, and now I’m going to fight aliens with a light saber. Maybe after that we can look for mermaids. Or unicorns.””No,” he says. “Just aliens.”Was that the barest hint of...

This isn’t a game,” he repeats. It’s real. What you do here determines your survival. He pauses. “And the survival of every other person on this planet.I laugh.He doesn’t. And that tells me he’s either...

The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always, when...