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Because that small breakthrough had been so elusive, such a monstrous mountain to scale, I had this idea that once having scaled it, everything else about the Dream would finally lie at my fingertips. Having caught the tip of the Dream, I assumed the rest of it was simply to be taken. I don’t know why, five novels later, it didn’t happen. Any conjecture would only sound graceless, bitter, and self-justifying.… Looking back, I’m not sure I ever believed the Dream was possible.
“Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, ‘In your lifetime, have you known peace?’ wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word ‘Yes,’ if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, ‘No, there was fear, there were our enemies without, our rulers within, there was prison, there was torture, there was violent death.’”
Rebecca West | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon