“It is strange. A man gets to know a woman. For a long time they are one. They have mingled their thoughts, their bodies, their hopes, their odours, their lives. They are one. And then a while later they are strangers. They are not one any more. Just as though it had never happened, as though looking at oneself in the mirror and seeing a stranger instead of one’s reflection.”

“It was as though, in one moment, he had become a stranger. And I a stranger to myself.”

“Few human beings can stand their own reflection because something strange happens in front of the mirror: You are looking at what you see, but if you dig a little deeper, beyond the surface, you are overcome by an uncomfortable feeling that it is the reflection that is looking at you insolently. You ask yourself who you are. As if you, not the reflection, were the stranger.”

“To know one’s own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one’s own face with one’s own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one’s reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all.”

“When one was an immortal, the freshness of life had a way of dying even more quickly than one’s body had. As the centruies blended together, it was easy to forget the human side of oneself. To remember why humanity needed saving.It was hard to remember how to laugh. Then again, laguther and Valerius were virtual strangers. Until Tabitha, he’d never really shared a laugh with anyone.”

“But a stranger in a strange land, he is no one. Men know him not, and to know not is to care not for.”