"Because we do not know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, and yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps 4 or 5 times more Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless."

---Paul Bowles The Sheltering Sky 1949