“It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.”

“History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.”

“...What happens is of little significance compared with the stories we tell ourselves about what happens. Events matter little, only stories of events affect us.”

“There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”

“What happens is fact, not truth. Truth is what we think about what happens.”

“When you're living through them, events are nothing more than stuff that happens. You're not thinking about significance. Significance only comes when you look back at your life.”