Every life is a story, and every story is a life.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
The first fruit of this imagination - and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it - is the idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.
