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People are wrong when they talk of love at first sight. It is neither love nor lust. No. As she walks away from you, what you feel is loss. A premonition of loss.

I preferred contemplation to conversation.

"Hitler, Pol Pot. Funny, isn't it? How it only seems to be evil people who think they can change the world? I wonder why that is." And Kai had responded, "Because they're mad." She had dug a sharp elbow into his ribs. Then she shook her head. "But they do, don't they? They do change the world."

And when he wakes from dreaming of her, is it not the same for him? The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.

"The urge to order memories arrives with the age. A final sifting and sorting and cataloguing. To leave things in order before we go."

Rather it was the courage to stay that had failed him.

Broadly speaking though, when it comes down to it, there are just two types of liar: the fantasist and the purist. The fantasists are the embroiderers. Simplest to spot because they have a tendency to contradict. ... The trouble with the fantasists is that, in their eagerness to impress, they become careless about the details. The purists ... are of distinctly cooler temperament. Intellectually-minded, they understand the fallibility of memory, prefer to lie by omission. ... They all lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

"There are some things that may have happened in the past that carried less weight then than they do now. Or vice versa. That seemed important then, and now are all but forgotten."

For death takes everything, leaves behind no possibilities, save one - which is to remember.