Reading the past

There are very few who can read the future. . . . But reading the past is a skill in and of itself. It's not just knowing the past. It's feeling it. It's deriving new strength and knowledge from it--learning from it all the time. It's my own guess that this was intended to be the great strength of human beings, when the Unnamed God came up with the notion of you. Sadly, like so many good ideas, it hasn't quite worked out in practice.

from Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch