This work of mine is neither true nor perfect. And despite some financial losses and great labor, not to mention career disasters, I had to endure no scurvy, no stench, and no arrows. Alchemist or voyager, I am a lucky man after all. All the luckier for having successfully completed a journey most thought impossible; for still being alive, when most feared I had been lost at sea; for having been able to count on many supporters and friends during the crossing; and for not having lost sight of the entire sequence of purposes, despite so long a journey.

From Roberto Franzosi’s From Words to Numbers: Narrative, Data, and Social Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 334.