" Love and loss—two things that went together, it seemed, with a poignant inevitability; we loved, knowing that we would lose, but loved nonetheless because...She stopped. Yes, because we did not choose to love; we loved because we had to. Love was something that happened to us; it was never planned, even if we knew that some day, at some moment, it might alight upon us and—we hoped—change everything. "

― Alexander McCall Smith , The Quiet Side of Passion (Isabel Dalhousie #12)