Green Mars (Mars Trilogy, #2)

by Kim Stanley Robinson

I was old the day I was born and I’ll be young the day I die.”

All her memories were going away, which she found comforting. She worked at it, in fact, concentrating on the moment with such intensity that even the moment itself went away, each instant a burst of light in a fog, like things breaking in her

Now the sky was starry black, with no more than a dark purple band left on the western skyline. Her tears were gone, along with her feelings; nothing left but the black world and a slash of purple bitterness, like a wound bleeding into the night.

The past was so shot full of holes anyway, a ragged collection of images—eventually she would forget for real, surely. Although the memories that held the firmest seemed to stick because of a glue made of pain, and remorse. So it might take a while to forget them, even though they were so corrosive, so painful, so useless.