Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed! Oh lead my song in smooth and measured strains, from olden days when earth began to this completed time!
Ovid, "Prologue" from Metamorphoses, 8 CE (via etext)