Top 250 Becky Chambers Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.”

— Becky Chambers

152. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

153. “The mirror knows you’re anxious to see yourself – but take your time, it says. I’m here when you’re ready, and not a second before. It is the kindest object placement I’ve ever seen.”

— Becky Chambers

154. “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?”

— Becky Chambers

155. “Robots, they’ll remind you, possessed no self-aware tendencies whatsoever when they were first deployed, and were originally intended as a supplement to the human workforce, not as the full replacement they became.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

157. “I can’t always speak my mind, not if I want to get the things I need or go places I need to go. Everything I do, every word I say, is calculated to make people comfortable. To make them respect me. None of it is a lie, but it is an act, and it’s one that gets very, very tiring.”

— Becky Chambers

158. “So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.”

— Becky Chambers

159. “The human body can adapt to almost anything, but it is deceptively selective about the way it does so.”

— Becky Chambers

160. “Aeluon women didn’t have breasts, but after meeting Pei, Ashby had found that he could do without. His teenage self would’ve been horrified.”

— Becky Chambers

161. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

162. “He no longer felt helplessness. He felt powerful. And that was what scared him.”

— Becky Chambers

163. “Fear is miserable, as is pain. As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to do absolutely anything to stop those feelings as fast as possible. We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid. It wasn’t the elk’s fault. The elk just.”

— Becky Chambers

164. “So, we’re smarter than our remnants, is what you’re saying.” Mosscap gave a slow nod. “If we choose to be.”

— Becky Chambers

165. “But I’m not a moth. I’m human. And in humans, there are far more stages than just two. 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 might not be able to return to the other Ariadnes, but I would not always be the Ariadne floating in front of the mirror, either.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

167. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

169. “Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing.”

— Becky Chambers

170. “My mind felt quiet, at last. But the feeling was so precious, that I was reluctant to accept it. I had become so accustomed to the cacophony that part of me perversely wished for it, more trusting of unending discord than peace that could be snatched away.”

— Becky Chambers

171. “Knowledge should always be free,’ she said. ‘What people do with it is up to them.”

— Becky Chambers

172. “The cheap knick-knack in his hands now carried with it a sentiment of the present he would cherish, and a reminder of the past he would always loathe. Only the finest art could accomplish both those things at once.”

— Becky Chambers

173. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

174. “If you’re focused on moving from sign to sign, there’s no opportunity for happy accidents.”

— Becky Chambers

175. “It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward.”

— Becky Chambers

176. “We have found nothing you can sell. We have found nothing you can put to practical use. We have found no worlds that could be easily or ethically settled, were that end desired. We have satisfied nothing but curiosity, gained nothing but knowledge.”

— Becky Chambers

177. “But you can’t fix everything with cake.”

— Becky Chambers

178. “And sometimes fear is good. Fear keeps you alive. But it can also keep you from what you really want.”

— Becky Chambers

179. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

181. “Life was fluid, gradient, ever shifting.”

— Becky Chambers

182. “What do you need?” Mosscap asked. “Tea,” Dex said. Caffeine, they thought, grabbing a few of their jars. They had a feeling they were going to need it.”

— Becky Chambers

183. “What kind of books does Ms. Amelia collect?” “Oh, entirely pornography,” Mosscap said. “It was very educational.”

— Becky Chambers

184. “People – a group comprised of every sapient species, organic or otherwise – were chaos, but chaos was good. Chaos was the only sensible conclusion.”

— Becky Chambers

185. “There was no law that was just in every situation, no blanket rule that could apply to everyone, no explanation that accounted for every component. This did not mean that laws and rules were not helpful, or that explanations should not be sought, but rather that there should be no fear in changing them as needed, for nothing in the universe ever held still.”

— Becky Chambers

186. “You and I – we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”

— Becky Chambers

187. “We abandoned our short sight. We abandoned our bloody ways. We made ourselves anew.”

— Becky Chambers

188. “Hope isn’t about predicting the future; it’s about how you approach it.”

— Becky Chambers

189. “If you have everything you need around you,” Dex said, “there’s no reason to leave. It takes a lot of time and effort to go someplace else.”

— Becky Chambers

190. “It’s one thing to be told about the world that was. It’s another to see a piece it.”

— Becky Chambers

191. “We’re coming in at their happy ending and not stopping to think about how they got there. We want to take on their story. And we can, if we want to. But I worry about those who think adopting someone else’s story means abandoning their own.”

— Becky Chambers

192. “This one choice didn’t answer everything for her, not even close. How could it? Life was never a matter of one decision alone. Life was just a bunch of tiny steps, one after another, each a conclusion that lead to a dozen questions more.”

— Becky Chambers

193. “In traditional Aeluon culture, a mother was not a parent. Parents were men and shon. Parents went to school for it. Parents were the people who actually raised children, not those who had done the easy business of creating them.”

— Becky Chambers

194. “We should’ve known better, as students of the universe. There’s no escaping entropy.”

— Becky Chambers

195. “What that perspective is, I have no idea. But you’ll find one. Otherwise, you’ll only ever think about other people in the abstract. That’s a poisonous thing, thinking your way is all there is.”

— Becky Chambers

196. “You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply.”

— Becky Chambers

197. “She was losing a day of shore leave because of this, and that definitely soured her mood, but she was sure things were far worse for others with strict schedules and urgent business. No one had died, as far as she knew. No one in her immediate locale was hurt. Still, though, harm was harm, and she found herself wrestling between two truths until she realised neither was a zero-sum: This wasn’t the worst that could happen. It was a bad thing all the same.”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

199. “Everything else breaks down and is made into other things.”

— Becky Chambers

200. “If trying something new was valid, then keeping something old was, too.”

— Becky Chambers