I am everyman and no man, and will be so to the end. This is why I must tell the story as I may. Not for the nameless name upon the page, not for the trails behind me that faded or led nowhere, ... not for the confusion of where I was to go, or if I had a destiny recognisable by any start. No, in retrospect it was the loneliness of not knowing, not knowing at all.
Loren Eiseley in All the Strange Hours: The Excavation of a Life (1975).
The above piece is cited in a book on Loren Eiseley's "concealed essay" genre of science based writings in Toward a Dialogue of Understandings: Loren Eiseley and the Critique of Science by Mary Ellen Pitts.
More on Eiseley HERE.
