A text is a non-work, a text without significance, occupying no space in the charted terrain of discourse. In contrast, a work is a significant text, a text that has become a work when it is attached to an author or authors (proven or attributed) and is recognized as an example of a literary genre and/or an articulation of an intellectual tradition.

the infrequency of her visits

Terrified as they already were, I could imagine their tension boiling over into hysteria, wordlessness and in some cases madness when they were stuffed into slave ships like fish into buckets, hauled across the seas and sold—if they survived—at auctions.

I sat on the floppy purple thing inflating blobbily behind me. Just how far away are you? It firmed beneath me.