digression

Every means and every weapon is valid to save oneself from death and time. If a straight line is the distance between two fated and inevitable points, digressions will lengthen it; and if these digressions become so complex, so tangled and tortuous, so rapid as to hide their own tracks, who knows – perhaps death may not find us, perhaps time will lose its way, and perhaps we ourselves can remain concealed in our shifting hiding places.

Lawrence Sterne The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman