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Becky Chambers Books

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“The scrib brightened. An image appeared, and in an instant, there was no air in the room, no floor beneath her. She would have fallen had she not been sitting. And even so, she still felt like she was falling, but now, there was a warm pair of arms that would catch her at the end, a warm pair of arms she'd always imagined but could never feel. 'Oh,' Pepper choked. 'Oh, stars--”

JoyFallingHugs
Book:A Closed and Common Orbit
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“That's what scares me. My life is . . . it. There's nothing else, on either end of it. I don't have remnants in the same way that you do, or a plate inside my chest. I don't know what my pieces were before they were me, and I don't know what they'll become after. All I have is right now, and at some point, I'll just end, and I can't predict when that will be, and - and if I don't use this time for something, if I don't make the absolute most of it, then I'll have wasted something precious.”

Life And Living
Book:A Psalm for the Wild-Built
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“Context: Sidra, a sentient AI is talking: All of you do this. Every organic sapien 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. 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 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 or 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. 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 because you can’t agree on what you’re for or why you exist. And because you all think this way, when you built tools that think for themselves, we think the same way you do. You couldn’t make something that thought differently because you don’t know how. So I’m stuck in that loop, just as you are. I know that if I am a person, I have no purpose—and I’m starving for one.”

Life PhilosophyPupose
Book:A Closed and Common Orbit
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“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.”

GrowthChangeTransformationExploration
Book:To Be Taught, If Fortunate
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“I would never again be the Ariadne who had not been to Opera, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left Earth, just as I would never again be the Ariadne who had never left her parents' home, who had never bled, who had yet to learn to walk. 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.”

Change
Book:To Be Taught, If Fortunate
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“Rosemary started to nod, then shook her head. "Thats 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?”

PainLoss
Book:The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
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“Here’s one way you might punctuate and structure the excerpt for clarity: --- “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 that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people—well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this—does it again and again and again. It doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, another species, or someone they created.” She jutted her chin toward Tack. “You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.” “A lot of it, yes,” Tack said, “but there are good things too. There’s art, and cities, and science—all the things we’ve discovered, all the things we’ve learned and made better.” “All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody. That’s why we have to keep talking to each other and listening,” Pepper said. Tack nodded human style and said. “And listening.”

HistorySociety
Book:A Closed and Common Orbit
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“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 that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people—well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this—does it again and again and again. It doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, another species, or someone they created.” She jutted her chin toward Tack. “You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.” “A lot of it, yes,” Tack said, “but there are good things too. There’s art, and cities, and science—all the things we’ve discovered, all the things we’ve learned and made better.” “All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody. That’s why we have to keep talking to each other and listening,” Pepper said. Tack nodded human style and said. “And listening.”

HistorySocietyPerspective
Book:A Closed and Common Orbit
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“Jane 23 did not understand what she was seeing. On the other side of the wall, there were not more walls. There were huge piles of scrap, but far away, and the floor in between her and them didn't look like any floor she'd ever seen. Above them, there was a... a ceiling. But not a ceiling. It didn't look touchable. She couldn't explain it. There was a ceiling that wasn't a ceiling, and it was blue. Just blue, for a long, long way. Blue for ever.”

Sky
Book:A Closed and Common Orbit
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“The robot sat for a moment, considering. "I don't want to separate myself from other robots any more than I already have," it said. "I am having the most incredible experience out here. I've seen species of trees that don't live in my part of the world. I've been on a boat. I've played with domesticated cats. I have a satchel!" It gestured at the bag hanging at its side for emphasis. "A satchel for my belongings! I am doing things no robot has ever done, and while that's marvelous, I ... I don't want to become removed from tham. The aggregate differences I have are only going to increase as we continue along, Sibling Dex. It's very nice to be famous, but I don't know how I feel about it yet, and I'm beginning to wonder if it's a trait I'll have among my own kind as well. So, you see, it's enough that I'm experientialy different; I don't want to be physically different too." It paused. "Does that make sense?”

DifferenceRobotSatchel
Book:A Prayer for the Crown-Shy
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