Top 250 Becky Chambers Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

2. “No good can come from a species at war with itself. Never has, never will.”

— Becky Chambers

3. “The planet was beautiful. The planet was horrible. The planet was full of people, and they were beautiful and horrible, too.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

5. “What was better – a constant safeness that never grew and never changed, or a life of reaching, building, striving, even though you knew you’d never be completely satisfied?”

— Becky Chambers

6. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

7. “Pairs are not inventors. They are too unfocused, too short-lived. Good for Navigating and discussion theories, but bad at building. Building takes many, many mistakes. Pairs do not like mistakes. They like staring out windows. But Solitary like mistakes. Mistakes mean progress. We make good things. Great things.”

— Becky Chambers

8. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

9. “Perhaps the most crucial stage is that of ‘intraspecies chaos.’ This is the proving ground, the awkward adolescence when a species either learns to come together on a global scale, or dissolves into squabbling factions doomed to extinction, whether through war or ecological disasters too great to tackle divided.”

— Becky Chambers

10. “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!”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

12. “The very fact we use the term “cold-blooded” as a synonym for “heartless” should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles. Do not judge other species by your own social norms.”

— Becky Chambers

13. “The wilderness was not known for letting the foolish return.”

— Becky Chambers

14. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

16. “Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist on different scales.”

— Becky Chambers

17. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

18. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

19. “People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel. I.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

21. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

22. “All the things I’ve done to my body, I’ve done out of love. Seriously. I’ve gotten ink to remind me of all sorts of places and memories, but at the core, everything I’ve had done has been my way of saying that this is my body. That I don’t want the body everybody else told me I should have.”

— Becky Chambers

23. “Do not judge other species by your own social norms.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

25. “Harmagians had money. Aeluons had firepower. Aandrisks had diplomacy. Humans had arguments.”

— Becky Chambers

26. “The thing is, a lot of laws are stupid, too, and they don’t always keep people out of danger.”

— Becky Chambers

27. “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?”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

30. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

31. “From the stars, came the ground. From the ground, we stood. To the ground, we return.”

— Becky Chambers

32. “But every sapient species has a long, messy history of powers that rise and fall. The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.”

— Becky Chambers

33. “Ashby didn’t just know this Aeluon. Ashby was banging this Aeluon.”

— Becky Chambers

34. “Maybe a compass could be an anchor, too.”

— Becky Chambers

35. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

36. “There were two things about the plan that worried Sidra: the breach of Pepper’s privacy, and the part that could kill Sidra if she did it wrong. The rest of it was easy.”

— Becky Chambers

37. “Nobody should be alone,” Sissix said. “Being alone and untouched... there’s no punishment worse than that. And she’s done nothing wrong. She’s just different.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

39. “Time was a curious equaliser.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

41. “I am now starving. What sounds good? Noodles? Skewers? Ice cream? We’re grown-ups, we can have ice cream for lunch if we want.”

— Becky Chambers

42. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

43. “I never thought of fear as something that can go away. It just is. It reminds me that I want to stay alive. That doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.”

— Becky Chambers

44. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

45. “My own research methodology professor phrased this concept succinctly: learn nothing of your subjects, and you will disrupt them. Learn something of your subjects, and you will disrupt them.”

— Becky Chambers

46. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

49. “So we travel to one end – whoosh – and all the people seeing us fly by are like, oh my stars, look at that totally amazing ship, what genius tech patched together such a thing, and I’m like, oh, that’s me, Kizzy Shao, you can all name your babies after me – whooosh – and then we get to our start point.”

— Becky Chambers

50. “In the space beyond was Hedra Ka. A cracking scab of a planet, choked with storms and veins of lava. A mist of rocks floated in orbit, a reminder of its recent formation. It was a young world, unwelcoming, resentful of its existence. ‘That is the angriest looking thing I’ve ever seen,’ Ashby said.”

— Becky Chambers