" ' My project,' he told us, 'is to learn where to go by discovering where I am by reviewing where I've been-- where we've all been. There's a kind of snail in the Maryland marshes-- perhaps I invented him-- that makes his shell as he goes along out of whatever he comes across, cementing it with his own juices, and at the same time makes his path instinctively toward the best available material for his shell; he carries his history in his back, living in it, adding new and larger spirals to it from the present as he grows. That snail's pace has become my pace-- but I'm going in circles, following my own trail!" 

-Dunyazadiad, John Barth