Hindsight's a wonderful thing. If we all had it there would be no history to write about.

Perhaps we are on an insula ex machina, an artificial place not in the real world at all -- a backdrop for the stories we must tell.

Sylvie's knowledge, like Izzie's, was random yet far-ranging, 'The sign that one has acquired one's learning from reading novels rather than an education.

Become such as you are, having learned what that is.

Life wasn't about becoming, was it? It was about being.

He was born a politician. No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.

Most people muddled through events and only in retrospect realized their significance.