You’re a damn fool, boy. I want you to know that now, in case I don’t get a chance to tell you later. - Stephen Baxter

“No. You are wrong. These structures are alive.”
“What?”
“By any reasonable definition of the word. They can reproduce themselves. They can manipulate the external world, creating local conditions of increased order. They have internal states which can change independently of external inputs; they have memories which can be accessed at will…All these are characteristics of Life, and Mind.

The last of the Qax had come sliding through the interstices of space and now hovered with him over the frigid surface of the star.
Human and Qax, huddled around the chill proton star, did not attempt to communicate. There was nothing more to say.
The river of time flowed, unmarked, towards the endless seas of timelike infinity.

The hugeness of time, and the littleness of man and his achievements, quite crushed me; and my own, petty concerns seemed of absurd insignificance. The story of Humanity seemed trivial, a flash-lamp moment lost in the dark, mindless halls of Eternity.