"No doubt that by selecting a certain method and taking great pains the whole story might have been written out on a cigarette paper. For that matter, the whole history of mankind could be written thus if only approached with sufficient detachment. The history of men on this earth since the beginning of ages may be resumed in one phrase of infinite poignancy: They were born, they suffered, they died . . . Yet it is a great tale But in the infinitely minute stories about men and women it is my lot on earth to narrate I am not capable of such detachment. . . ." -- from Conrad's Preface to CHANCE