All this I knew, and yet it was a different thing, to learn it from Delaunay: not stories, but histories. For this too I learned, that a storyteller's tale may end, but history goes on always. These events, so distant in legend, play a part in shaping the very events we witness about us, each and every day. When I understood this, Delaunay said, I might begin to understand.

But there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads. We needs must study the whole warp and weft of it to predict the pattern on the loom.

Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

"Dying is easy. Anyone can do that," Suri said. "Living - going on after you've lost those you love, having to face each new day under the weight of their absence - is what's hard. You have to witness a sun that is never again as bright and hear music that is no longer cheerful. Eating food will never fully satisfy, and you wake each morning to a shattered world that can never again be whole. Despite all this, you have to find a reason to breathe, to move." Suri stared at Makareta. "You've killed, and so have I, but that doesn't compare to losing someone you loved. That's when you really lose a part of yourself. Have you gone through that?"

Michael J. Sullivan, Age of Empyre

When people are happy, they can become deaf. I don't know why that is, but I've noticed it to be true. Misery helps us hear. We notice more when we're in pain. We see beauty more clearly, hear the sufferings of others more loudly. Since you pulled me back, every sunrise is so much brighter, every breeze a delight. I think people who survive tragedy aren't so much scarred as they are cleansed. The wax comes out of their ears and the clouds leave their eyes. The barriers between them and the world are reduced.

Michael J. Sullivan, Age of War

Disillusionment was inevitable; after the twenties came the depression thirties and then another war. And things were different after that one. No new memorials emerged triumphantly, defiantly, hopefully out of the mushroom cloud of World War Two. Hope perished in the gas chambers of Poland. A new generation of the battle-damaged were blown home and a second set of names chiselled onto the bases of existing statues; sons below fathers. And in everybody’s mind, the weary knowledge that some day young men would once again be falling. Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn’t flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternative version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.

(...)

In real life turning points are sneaky. They pass by unlabelled and unheeded. Opportunities are missed, catastrophes unwittingly celebrated. Turning points are only uncovered later, by historians who seek to bring order to a lifetime of tangled moments.

Kate Morton, The House at Riverton

“This oak was already old when I was born. Now I am old and soon to die and this tree grows strong still. We are small creatures, Hafgan. Our lives are not long.”

“Long enough to learn what is required of us.”

“Oh, aye, long enough to learn what we need to learn, but not long enough to change anything,” agreed Cormach wistfully. “That is our flaw. Each age must learn everything afresh. Such waste! Such waste—making all the mistakes once again, each generation making the same mistakes, fumbling in ignorance and darkness.” He raised a hand to the tree. “Hail, stout brother! Know our weakness and do not unkindly consider us.”

Stephen R. Lawhead, Taliesin