"The past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences."

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When I was young, I had to choose between the life of being and the life of doing. And I leapt at the latter like a trout to a fly. But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. Or wonder who, after all, you are.

— Ursula K. Le Guin