Thrice I have had my chance—thrice! If ever that door offers itself to me again, I swore, I will go in out of this dust and heat, out of this dry glitter of vanity, out of these toilsome futilities. I will go and never return. This time I will stay… I swore it and when the time came—I didn’t go.
Three times in one year have I passed that door and failed to enter. Three times in the last year.
— Herbert George Wells, The Door in the Wall