'...everyone, through the inner monologue that is his reflective commentary on experience, selects and subtly distorts the facts so as to make him more interesting or more tolerable to himself, in doing so he creates a personal mythology which, because it modifies him, does become representative truth. Such modifications to the basic model built by one's genes and early environment are no doubt extremely limited. The individual cannot be re-made. But he is not, I believe, condemned to an unalterable pattern: there remains a certain "play" within the microcosm, as there is within the laws of the physical universe: inner and outer necessity, bearing upon a man now at this point, now at that, may call forth latent characteristics, or relegate dominant ones to comparative inactivity, so that the balance of his powers and preoccupations is changed a little. Time and again, he "reverts to pattern"; but the pattern is not precisely the same after each shake-up.'
from The Buried Day by C Day Lewis (Postscript)
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