Top 250 Becky Chambers Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 5 of 6

201. “Vast civilizations lay within the mosaic of dirt: hymenopteran labyrinths, rodential panic rooms, life-giving airways sculpted by the traffic of worms, hopeful spiders’ hunting cabins, crash pads for nomadic beetles, trees shyly locking toes with one another. It was here that you’d find the resourcefulness of rot, the wholeness of fungi.”

— Becky Chambers

202. “I read a book while you were sleeping,” Mosscap said, holding up its pocket computer. “And I would really like to discuss it with you.” Dex blinked twice. “You woke me up to talk about a book?”

— Becky Chambers

203. “Possessing knowledge and performing an action are two entirely different processes.”

— Becky Chambers

204. “There was a difference between being shy and being sequestered. Rarely in history had things turned out well for people who chose to lock themselves away.”

— Becky Chambers

205. “It felt, in that moment, like time had compressed, like history was no longer segmented into Ages and Eras, but here, living, now.”

— Becky Chambers

206. “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

207. “He knew there would never be a point in his life in which he knew everything there was to know, and while part of him despaired at the puzzle that would never be solved, the rest of him embraced this truth fully, for what satisfaction could there be in having nothing else to ask?”

— Becky Chambers

208. “It 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?”

— Becky Chambers

209. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

210. “The gendered expectations of parenting were dissolving, but even though women could be found working in creches now, there was still an enormous difference between the person who produced an egg and the person who cared for the little being that crawled out of it.”

— Becky Chambers

211. “There is peace out here in the open. I have friends and a garden in the stars and a kitchen full of tasty things.”

— Becky Chambers

212. “Fifty percent of Panga’s single continent was designated for human use; the rest was left to nature, and the ocean was barely touched at all. It was a crazy split, if you thought about it: half the land for a single species, half for the hundreds of thousands of others. But then, humans had a knack for throwing things out of balance. Finding a limit they’d stick to was victory enough.”

— Becky Chambers

213. “The thing every being fears most is the only thing that’s for certain?”

— Becky Chambers

214. “Roveg was nothing if not a champion of playing one’s own tune, but there were some areas in which individuality stopped being a virtue and became more of a game of chance.”

— Becky Chambers

215. “I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’. It’s often misused, operating on the false interpretation that fit means physically fit, therefore expressing a dog-eat-dog ethos. The strongest wins the day. But that’s not what Darwin meant, not at all. He meant most suited to, as in, the creatures most suited to – or most fit for – a specific environment are the ones with the best chance of passing on their genes.”

— Becky Chambers

216. “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

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

— Becky Chambers

218. “They pulled out their pocket computer, as was their habit first thing, dimly aware of the hope that always spurred them to do so – that there might be something good there, something exciting or nourishing, something that would replace the weariness.”

— Becky Chambers

219. “I do not have a purpose any more than a mouse or a slug or a thornbush does. Why do you have to have one in order to feel content?”

— Becky Chambers

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

— Becky Chambers

221. “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

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

— Becky Chambers

223. “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

224. “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

225. “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

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

— Becky Chambers

227. “She closed her eyes and let out a tremendous sigh. Her shoulders visibly slumped. She’d always had the ability to relax them; she’d just needed permission to do so.”

— Becky Chambers

228. “Tea service wasn’t anything arcane. People came to the wagon with their problems and left with a fresh-brewed cup. Dex had taken respite in tea parlors plenty of times, as everyone did, and they’d read plenty of books about the particulars of the practice. Endless electronic ink had been spilled over the old tradition, but all of it could be boiled down to listen to people, give tea. Uncomplicated as could be.”

— Becky Chambers

229. “A place where a person had ample space to stretch one’s own thoughts while still benefiting from the reassuring company of others at a distance.”

— Becky Chambers

230. “She wished someone would give her that sort of attention on a whim. She wished she were confident enough to give it back.”

— Becky Chambers

231. “The robot cocked its rectangular head at Dex. “How do you know when you’re satisfied?”

— Becky Chambers

232. “His silence sounded baffled.”

— Becky Chambers

233. “With effort, they turned the wagon around and headed for a road they’d never seen before. What are you doing? they thought. The hell are you doing? I don’t know, they replied with a nervous grin. I have no idea.”

— Becky Chambers

234. “Repeating history that had left living memory was an all-too-human tendency.”

— Becky Chambers

235. “I went through the library and found a book that taught me how. I’ve never read a book before; it was very exciting. They’re not supposed to fall apart when you touch them, though, right?” Somewhere in the world, an archaeologist was screaming, but Dex smiled, partly amused, mostly relieved that the hermitage wasn’t burning down around them.”

— Becky Chambers

236. “The enhanced call us misfits – people who don’t fir their intended purpose. So maybe you’re a misfit too. Doesn’t mean you’re not deserving. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be here.”

— Becky Chambers

237. “I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having.”

— Becky Chambers

238. “Roveg forgave her a few of the exclamation points. Not all of them, but a few.”

— Becky Chambers

239. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

240. “Despite these blessings, sometimes Dex could not sleep. In those hours, they frequently asked themself what it was they were doing. They never truly felt like they got a handle on that. They kept doing it all the same.”

— Becky Chambers

241. “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.”

— Becky Chambers

242. “I miss the sorts of gatherings that call for coffee.”

— Becky Chambers

243. “Of how any sighted individual’s perception of the world is entirely based on the way the structures in their eyes receive light.” Mosscap smiled at Dex. “I wish I could borrow your eyes for a day, see what that’s like.” “Please find a less creepy way to phrase that.”

— Becky Chambers

244. “They still loved performing tea service – or at least, they loved what it had been. But as they tried to connect to what had once been so captivating, they felt nothing but yawning absence. A void where they’d once been filled.”

— Becky Chambers

245. “I’m not sure whether that’s tragic or whether you’ve been spared a lot of bother.”

— Becky Chambers

246. “It simply looked like the efforts of someone who was doing what they could with what they had. For all his love of aesthetics, Roveg could respect that. Sometimes all you could do was make it work.”

— Becky Chambers

247. “There was no way of knowing who would need what, and so it was best to carry everything.”

— Becky Chambers

248. “Clear divisions between right and wrong were rare in her work.”

— Becky Chambers

249. “I didn’t expect my life to be ending yet, but I suppose it always comes as a surprise, doesn’t it?”

— Becky Chambers

250. “Aww!” said Kizzy, clasping her hands over her heart. “You’re a physics virgin!”

— Becky Chambers