both of them know neither the future nor the ending

The specific feature of Surrealistic writing, whether it be autobiographical or automatic, is, in fact, less the lack of knowledge of its final destination as such, than the identical position into which this lack places both the reader and the author in the face of a text whose unfolding neither the one nor the other controls, and about which both of them know neither the future nor the ending.

(Denis Hollner, tr Rosalind Krauss, Surrealistic Precipitates: Shadows Don't Cast Shadows, quoted by Krauss in Robert Rauschenberg: a Retrospective (1997))

A net is a large thing, past thy fadoming, if thou cast it from three, but if thou draw it to thee it will lie upon thy arm.

(John Donne, Sermon 14 (1620s))