Ah, self-interest at last. Despite all of our differences, of race and time and distance, we achieve commonality. I understand self-interest. - Lawrence M. Schoen

There’s a part of you that insists reality follow the same parameters it always has, even here. That attachment to the way things work in the living world precludes this kind of manipulation. I, on the other hand, had the privilege of spending a good portion of time, when I was alive, in the paroxysms of my own insanity. Rather liberating, in its own way.

Besides, prophecies are tricky stuff. It's only after that people recognize them as important. At the time they're spoken most people don't want to hear about them."
"Really? But aren't they truth?"
"Especially then. Truth is tough."
"Why? I mean, it's the truth. It just is."
"I think that's so, in the abstract, but none of us get to really know the abstract. We only know what we think.

As a historian, he understood that what in hindsight were taken to be grand events really consisted of a myriad of tiny, seemingly inconsequential choices. Often as not, great moments hung on coincidences and random luck.