" The past would be useful if you could use it like that, as a place where you could bury dead bodies, shovelling this convenient loss of memory into the grave to cover up their faces. That’s not what the past was for, though. It was where the present went to rot down, so you could use it to grow the future. He smiled; nice piece of imagery, but it was too glib to fool anyone. "

― K.J. Parker , Memory (Scavenger, #3)