We all have such fateful objects — it may be a recurrent landscape in one case, a number in another — carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of special significance for us: here shall John always stumble; there shall Jane’s heart always break.

Humber Humber, Lolita by Nabokov

And mine, my dear, is you.

The eye that sees round about itself sees not into itself

from The Unfortunate Traveller by Thomas Nashe