"The ghosts of everything"

"'What I have found,' he said, 'is that most journeys take you back to where you left from.  But not all.  A very long time ago I learned that at the end of some journeys, you start again somewhere new.  They don't happen very often.  Such journeys as those.  So when they do it's worth taking note.'  He gestured at the book.  'In any case recalling has never been a difficulty.  But there are ways of seeing.  See too many and it's overwhelming.  If you're looking for patterns, there is a line between too little information and too much.  So this is data.'

'And this,' I said, holding it up, 'is enough?  The perfect amount of information?'

'No,' he said.  'Not nearly enough.  It might be enough in a long time.  And when I write in it, as when anyone writes in any book, what I record is accompanied by the infinite ghosts of that which is not recorded.'

'The ghosts of everything,' I said."

-- China Mieville and Keanu Reeves, The Book of Elsewhere