And if his life was important, if it differed from other lives, it was because even its smallest, seemingly mutest events took on meaning, and acquired a resonance of their own, from Ludmila’s presence in them.
—Vasily Grossman, Stalingrad
And later, making my way through life, I gradually came to see that this brother was, as it were, a pointer and a destination from above in my fate, for if [Markel] had not appeared in my life, if he had not been at all, then never, perhaps, as I think, would I have entered monastic orders and set out upon this precious path.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
