A love story is not about those who lost their heart but about those who find that sullen inhabitant who, when it is stumbled upon, means the body can fool no one, can fool nothing—not the wisdom of sleep or the habit of social graces. It is a consuming of oneself and the past.

Everything is biographical, Lucian Freud says. What we make, why it is made, how we draw a dog, who it is we are drawn to, why we cannot forget. Everything is collage, even genetics. There is the hidden presence of others in us, even those we have known briefly. We contain them for the rest of our lives, at every border we cross.

The one of the great sadnesses of any life is knowing what you know now and then remembering what you did not know then.

all this Beethoven and rain

The last three books are much more a case of a moment of history, what happened almost by accident or coincidence, like being in the same elevator or lifeboat.

Over the years, confusing fragments, lost corners of stories, have a clearer meaning when seen in a new light, a different place.

In the book the relationship with Katharine and Almasy is sort of only in the patient's mind.