" The thought came to her mind of how hard it must be to leave the small things one loves: the painting one’s become attached to and looks at every day; the favourite teacup that you’ve drunk out of at the breakfast table for years and years; our small links with the world. And how pressing, then, must become the urge to do something to perpetuate that relationship with that which is loved; to have an heir; to know what is going to happen to your possessions. Or did you accept that all these things were part of a world that you were leaving; that they were not yours in any permanent sense, because there was no such thing as permanence? "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Geometry of Holding Hands (Isabel Dalhousie #13)