Use of Weapons (Culture, #3)

by Iain M. Banks

Love, she maintained, was a process, not a state. Held still, it withered.

I know the way you people think; I respect it, I guess . . . but your life isn’t my life. I live in unsafe ways in dangerous places; always have done, always will do. I’ll die soon enough anyway, so why should I suffer the additional burden of getting old, even slowly?”