"...not only have i always had trouble distinguishing between what happened and what merely might have happened, but i remain unconvinced that the distinction, for my purposes, matters."
"...a breakthrough is part of both the past it came from and the future it starts, in the same way that a bend in the road serves as the end of one direction and the beginning of another. You can stand at the bend and look back to where the road came from and then turn to see where it goes. But if you stand elsewhere on the road, you see either a straight line that ends at the bend or a straight line that began at the same bend. Only at the point of breakthrough can you see both directions at once."