Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

That's old Twoflower, Rincewind thought. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate beauty, he just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil he stares at it and writes a long poem about it, but Twoflower wanders off to find a book on botany. He just looks at things, but nothing he looks at is ever the same again. Including me, I suspect.

Wizards had always known that the act of observation changed the thing that was observed, and sometimes forgot that it also changed the observer too.

And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think. So who is "me"?

There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.