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And let's not forget my absolute favorite quote, poetry describing the true awe and terror of having all of humanity's memories:

"I assure you that I am the book of fate. Questions are my enemies, for my questions explode. Answers leap up like a frightened flock blackening the sky of my inescapable memories. Not one answer. Not one suffices. What prisms flash when I enter the terrible field of my past? I am a chip ot shattered flint enclosed in a box. The box gyrates and quakes, I am tossed about in a storm of mysteries. And when the box opens, I return to this presence like a stranger in a primitive land. Slowly, slowly I say, I relearn my name. But that is not to know mtswlf. This person of my name, this "Leto" who is the second of that calling, finds other voices in his mine, other names, other places — oh, I promise you, as I have been promised, that I answer to but a single name. If you say "Leto," I respond. Sufferance makes this true. Sufferance and one thing more: I hold the threads. All of them are *mine.*

Let me but imagine a topic — say, men who have died by the sword — and I have them in all their gore, every moan, every grimace. Joys of motherhood, I think, and the birthing beds are mine. Serial baby smiles and the sweet cooings of new generations, first walkings, the first victories of youth are brought forward for me to share. They tumble forth, one upon another, until I can see little else but sameness and repetition. "Keep it all in tact," I warn myself. Who can deny the value of such experiences? The worth of learning through which I view each new instant. Ahhhh, but it's the past, don't you understand? It's only the past.

This morning I was born on a yurt on the edge of a horse-plain in a land of a planet that no longer exists. Tomorrow I will be born somewhere else, in another place. I have not yet chosen. This morning, thought — ahhh, this life! When my eyes had learned to focus, I looked out at sunshine on trampled grass and I saw vigorous people going about the sweet activities of their daily lives. Where oh where has all that vigor gone?"