The Hero of My Own Life

Ellen: "Those days you never seemed to get tired of David Copperfield."

Trond: "It's a long time since I last read that one." [...]

Ellen: "Then I think you should read it again," she says, and resting her chin in one hand with her elbow on the table she says:

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."

She smiles again and says, "I always thought those opening lines were a bit scary because they indicated we would not necessarily be the leading characters of our own lives. I couldn't imagine how that could come about, something so awful; a sort of ghost-life where I could do nothing but watch that person who had taken my place and maybe hate her deeply and envy her everything, but not be able to do anything about it because at some point in time I had fallen out of my life, as if from an aeroplane, I pictured it, and out into empty space, and there I drifted about and could not get back, and someone else was sitting fastened into my seat, although that place was mine, and I had the ticket in my hand."

--Per Petterson, Stealing Horses (2005)