" But we are damned. Compared to you.” “By duration? Eight hundred thousand of your years— so much as I have counted—are still not enough. Your time is short and vivid, colored. Mine…I scream, sometimes, in this night.” “Good God.” He paused. The voice had shifted to a deeper bass and now seemed to echo in the cabin. “I would like to have those years, whatever you say. Mortality—” “Is a spice. A valued one.” “Still—” “You are not damned. "

― Gregory Benford , In the Ocean of Night (Galactic Center, #1)