He unrolls names like a splendid carpet. - James Salter

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change.

«No hay felicidad como esta dicha: mañanas apacibles, la luz del río, el fin de semana por delante. Vivían una vida rusa, una vida fecunda, entrelazada, en la que un infortunio de uno de los miembros, un fracaso, una enfermedad, rompería el equilibrio de todos. Aquella vida era como una prenda de vestir. Su belleza estaba fuera, su calor dentro»

To the world she knew, to the few friends who had by then drifted away, to everyone except himself and Dorothy, it was no longer important that she live. What had been her life, the people she knew and the deep pool of memory and knowing, had vanished or dried up and fallen apart.