Becky Chambers Quotes

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

Ninety percent of all problems are caused by people being assholes.” “What causes the other ten percent?” asked Kizzy. “Natural disasters,” said Nib.

We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.

All you can do, Rosemary – all any of us can do – is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.

You don’t have to have a reason to be tired. You don’t have to earn rest or comfort. You’re allowed to just be.

I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.

We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.

I can wait for the galaxy outside to get a little kinder.

We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.

People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful.

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said.

Sometimes a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city

The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.

At some point, you have to accept the fact that any movement creates waves, and the only other option is to lie still and learn nothing.

We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid.

Humans’ preoccupation with ‘being happy’ was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief.

Do not judge other species by your own social norms

We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank.

That’s not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it’s . . . it doesn’t even compare.’ ‘Why? Because it’s worse?’ She nodded. ‘But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I’ve broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?

From the ground, we stand. From our ships, we live. By the stars, we hope.

Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.

Don't believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence.

Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.

The amount a person can spare is relative; the value of generosity is not.

No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief.

Then how,” Dex said, “how does the idea of maybe being meaningless sit well with you?” Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,

You’re an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.

Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?

It is difficult to give thought to the stars when the ground is swallowing you up.

How am I supposed to tell people they’re good enough as they are when I don’t think I am?

Still. Something is missing. Something is off. So, how fucking spoiled am I, then? How fucking broken? What is wrong with me that I can have everything I could ever want and have ever asked for and still wake up in the morning feeling like every day is a slog?

I'm an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them.

Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.

You and I -- we're just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?

Tresha. It was the thankful, humble, vulnerable feeling that came after someone saw a truth in you, something they had discovered just by watching, something that you did not admit often to yourself.

The thing about fucking off to the woods is that unless you are a very particular, very rare sort of person, it does not take long to understand why people left said woods in the first place.

If you understand that robots' lack of purpose - our refusal of your purpose - is the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy in seeking the opposite?

We exist where we begin, yet to remain is death.

And to that end, welcome comfort, for without it, you cannot stay strong.

If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.

The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us. You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them — not all, but most — who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they’d done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place. Wondering when killing became so comfortable.

Most sapients confuse working hard with being miserable.

The guilt lingered, even so. Ghosts were imaginary, but hauntings were real.

What do your crazy speciests do?” Kizzy asked. Sissix shrugged. “Live on gated farms and have private orgies.” “How is that any different than what the rest of you do?” “We don’t have gates and anybody can come to our orgies.

From the ground, we stand; From our ships, we live; By the stars, we hope. —Exodan proverb

I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having.

You know how it is; sometimes you just want to have a moment between yourself and a turtle and no one else.

Want and intelligence,’ the historian had written, ‘is a dangerous combination.

war was nothing more than an argument in which no one had landed on a better solution than killing each other.

He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go away. It was as much a part of him as any pleasant feeling. Perhaps even more so.

Well, if this band hates the establishment that much, then I doubt they’ll care about me making up my own words. They can’t oppress me with their “correct lyrics.” Fuck the system.

We are a longstanding species with a very short memory. If we don’t keep record, we’ll make the same mistakes over and over again.

...a home can only exist in a moment. Something both bound and made. Always temporary, in the grand scheme of things, but vital all the same.

I appreciate the intent. I really do. But if you don’t want to infringe upon my agency, let me have agency.

Scared means we want to live.

Time was a curious equaliser.

Time could crawl, it could fly, it could amble. Time was a slippery thing.

Are we going for an anchor or a compass? A memory to ground you, or a spark to guide you forward?

Well, that's the nice thing about trees," Mosscap put its hands on its hips as it looked around. "They're not going anywhere. You can take all the time you need to get to know them.

I love learning. I love history. But there's history in everything. Every building, everybody you talk to. It's not limited to libraries and museums. I think people who spend their lives in school forget that sometimes. -Tak

Everybody thinks they're the exception to the rule, and that's exactly where the trouble starts. One person can do a lot of damage.

....We're machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its." "I'd say you're more than just an object," Dex said. The robot looked a touch offended. "I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex." It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. "We don't have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.

That’s such an incredibly organic bias, the idea that your squishy physical existence is some sort of pinnacle that all programs aspire to.

I know how much a world can change within the bookends of a lifetime.

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to just exist in this world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live.

...sometimes we go, and we try, and we suffer, and despite it all, we learn nothing. Sometimes we are left with more questions than when we started. Sometimes we do harm, despite our best efforts. We are human. We are fragile.

And seriously, anybody working in a job that doesn’t let you take a nap when you need to should get a new job.

The ache to return to a time long gone was almost worse than fear.

They just … don’t understand what you are. Or maybe they can’t fit you into their beliefs, and that scares them. The unknown makes us stupid sometimes.

Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off.

At the core, you’ve got to get university certification for parenting, just as you do for, say, being a doctor or an engineer. No offence to you or your species, but going into the business of creating life without any sort of formal prep is . . .’ He laughed. ‘It’s baffling. But then, I’m biased.

How else could you explain a sapient species that had overpopulated itself to the point of environmental collapse? This was a people that had coupled themselves stupid.

It’s difficult to assign value to discovery when you haven’t sorted out the parameters of reality yet.

If I ask what I'm asking only of people who agree with me at the outset, with whom I already share a dream and a language, then there's no point in asking at all.

She would never, ever understand the idea that a child, especially an infant, was of more value than an adult who had already gained all the skills needed to benefit the community. The death of a new hatchling was so common as to be expected. The death of a child about to feather, yes, that was sad. But a real tragedy was the loss of an adult with friends and lovers and family. The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.

Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we're doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe you're at the top. And if you're at the top, then people who aren't like you... well, they've got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn't matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.

For anybody who could use a break.

Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why we’re great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story. Or maybe the people kill the king because they don’t like his story and have begun to tell themselves a different one.

Mosscap considered. “Because I know that no matter what, I’m wonderful,” it said. There was nothing arrogant about the statement, nothing flippant or brash. It was merely an acknowledgment, a simple truth shared.

What if that is enough, for now? What if we're both trying to answer something much too big before we've answered the small thing we should have started with? What if it's enough to just be...Us.

Just because someone goes away doesn't mean you stop loving them.

Figure out what you love, specifically. In detail. Figure out what you want to keep. Figure out what you want to change. Otherwise, it’s not love. It’s clinging to the familiar

From the stars, came the ground. From the ground, we stood. To the ground, we return

I’m sorry, but I can’t accept a lesser evil for the sake of it being lesser.

You understand. I wish you didn't, because I know it means you're as tangled up as I am, but...I'm grateful that you do.

A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. It is a paradox -- the impossibility of reclaiming that which lies behind, housed within a form comprised entirely of the repurposed pieces of that same past. We exist where we begin, yet to remain there is death... I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself... I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her.

Rosemary thought of what Lovey said if you gave her one task too many: I’m sorry, but that’ll have to wait a moment. If I put anything more in my databanks, my processing streams will stall. And I hate that.

Owl had said it was important to know how swearing worked, and it was okay under the right circumstances, but that Jane shouldn’t swear all the time. Jane definitely swore all the time. She didn’t know why, but swearing felt fucking great.

Are you afraid of that?” they asked. “Of death?” “Of course,” Mosscap said. “All conscious things are. Why else do snakes bite? Why do birds fly away? But that’s part of the lesson too, I think. It’s very odd, isn’t it? The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain? It seems almost cruel, to have that so…” “So baked in?” “Yes.

was always a strange thing, coming home. Coming home meant that you had, at one point, left it and, in doing so, irreversibly changed. How odd, then, to be able to return to a place that would always be anchored in your notion of the past. How could this place still be there, if the you that once lived there no longer existed?

Behold, my wonderboots! All the kick-ass of an Aeluon assault squad, combined with total ergonomic perfection! It’s podiatric madness! What are they? Are they big tough stompers? Are they comfy kick-arounds? No one knows! There are feats of science happening right over my socks as we speak!

A rack of mugs rested alongside. There were two hand-drawn labels affixed to the decanters. “Happy Tea!” read one, above a drawing of a wide-eyed, grinning Human with frizzy hair standing on end. “Boring Tea,” read the other. The Human drawn there looked content, but indifferent.

The only way to really appreciate your way is to compare it to somebody else's way. Figure out what you love, specifically. In detail. Figure out what you want to keep. Figure out what you want to change. Otherwise, it's not love. It's clinging to the familiar--to the comfortable--and that's a dangerous thing for us short-term thinkers to do. If you stay, stay because you want to, because you've found something here worth embodying, because you believe in it. Otherwise...well, there's no point in being here at all, is there?

It's understandable why humans stopped living in space in the 2020s. How can you think of the stars when the seas are spilling over? How can you spare thought for alien ecosystems when your cities are too hot to inhabit? How can you trade fuel and metal and ideas when the lines on every map are in flux? How can anyone be expected to care about the questions of worlds above when the questions of the world you're stuck on — the most vital criteria of home and health and safety — remain unanswered?

All of you do this. Every organic sapient I’ve ever talked to, every book I’ve read, every piece of art I’ve studied. You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason. That thinking worked well for you, once. When you climbed down out of the trees, up out of the ocean – knowing what things were for was what kept you alive. Fruit is for eating. Fire is for warmth. Water is for drinking. And then you made tools, which were for certain kinds of fruit, for making fire, cleaning water. Everything was for something, so obviously, you had to be for something too, right? All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist.

Have you been in Sissix’s room yet?’ ‘No.’ ‘Okay, well, on her wall, there’s this big fancy frame with a mess of Aandrisk feathers hanging from it. Every Aandrisk’s got one, as far as I know. See, if you’re an Aandrisk and somebody really touches your life in some way, you give that person one of your feathers. And then you keep the feathers you get from others as a symbol of how many paths you’ve crossed. Having a lot of feathers on your wall shows that you’ve had an impact on a lot of people. That’s a pretty big life priority for most Aandrisks.

Lovers are fun, but kind of stupid, too. They say stupid things to each other and they ignore all their friends because they’re too busy staring, and they get jealous, and they have fights over dumb shit like who did the dishes last or why they can’t fold their fucking socks, and maybe the sex gets bad, or maybe they stop finding each other interesting, and then somebody bangs someone else, and everyone cries, and they see each other years later, and that person you once shared everything with is a total stranger you don’t even want to be around because it’s awkward.

It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something that only happens in carefully curated enclaves between towns, something that pops up in empty spaces if you ignore them for a while, even if you spend your whole life believing yourself to be deeply in touch with the ebb and flow, the cycle, the ecosystem as it actually is, you will still have trouble picturing an untouched world. You will still struggle to understand that human constructs are carved out and overlaid, that these are the places that are the in-between, not the other way around.

And there’s nothing better than brothers. Friends are great, but they come and go. Lovers are fun, but kind of stupid, too. They say stupid things to each other and they ignore all their friends because they’re too busy staring, and they get jealous, and they have fights over dumb shit like who did the dishes last or why they can’t fold their fucking socks, and maybe the sex gets bad, or maybe they stop finding each other interesting, and then somebody bangs someone else, and everyone cries, and they see each other years later, and that person you once shared everything with is a total stranger you don’t even want to be around because it’s awkward. But brothers. Brothers never go away. That’s for life. And I know married folks are supposed to be for life, too, but they’re not always. Brothers you can’t get rid of. They get who you are, and what you like, and they don’t care who you sleep with or what mistakes you make, because brothers aren’t mixed up in that part of your life. They see you at your worst, and they don’t care. And even when you fight, it doesn’t matter so much, because they still have to say hi to you on your birthday, and by then, everybody’s forgotten about it, and you have cake together.” She nodded. “So as much as I love my present, and as nice as it is to get a thank you, I don’t need either of ’em. Nothing’s too much to ask when it comes to brothers.

Kip cleared his throat and gave a brave smile. ‘We destroyed our world,’ he said, ‘and left it for the skies. Our numbers were few. Our species had scattered. We were the last to leave. We left the ground behind. We left the oceans. We left the air. We watched these things grow small. We watched them shrink into a point of light. As we watched, we understood. We understood what we were. We understood what we had lost. We understood what we would need to do to survive. We abandoned more than our ancestors’ world. We abandoned our short sight. We abandoned our bloody ways. We made ourselves anew.’ He spread his hands, encompassing the gathered. ‘We are the Exodus Fleet. We are those that wandered, that wander still. We are the homesteaders that shelter our families. We are the miners and foragers in the open. We are the ships that ferry between. We are the explorers who carry our names. We are the parents who lead the way. We are the children who continue on.’ He picked up his scrib from the podium. ‘What is his name?