"Two hundred and fifty years is a long time ... Do you have any concept of what happens to emotional bonds over such a period? .... No. Your life experience cannot possibly encompass what it is to love the same person for two hundred and fifty years. In the end, if you endure, if you beat the traps of boredom and complacency, in the end what you are left with is not love. It is almost veneration. How then to match that respect, that veneration with the sordid desires of whatever flesh you are wearing at the time? I tell you, you cannot." - Laurens Bancroft, "the client"