But how to establish the exact moment in which a story begins? Everything has already begun before; the first line of the first page of every novel refers to something that has already happened outside the book. The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest -- for example, the meeting of two people [other link 1 other link 2], which will become decisive for both -- must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story. (153).