You look older, son." "Yes, well, some of us have to get on with the business of being alive in the entropic universe. - Alastair Reynolds

Am I that fascinating to you, or are you just more bored than I imagined?

She would worry, just as you worry. It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.

The universe always feels old, though. That’s a universal truth, a universal fact of life. It felt old for her, already cobwebbed by history. Hard for us to grasp, I know. Human civilisation, it’s just the last scratch on the last scratch on the last scratch, on the last layer of everything. We’re noise. Dirt. We haven’t begun to leave a trace.