The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)

by Becky Chambers

“They act like all AIs want a body. Granted, I think I do, but that doesn’t mean all of us do. That’s such an incredibly organic bias, the idea that your squishy physical existence is some sort of pinnacle that all programs aspire to. No offense.”

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.

Fuck that. If I’m going to make changes to my body, they’re going to be changes that were my idea.”

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

“Being weird doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve companionship.

Who was he to talk to her about war? What did he know about it at all, aside from newsfeeds and reference files? War was nothing more than a story to him, something that happened to people he didn’t know in places he’d never been.

“And now you know how I feel every time you leave.” “It’s an awful way to feel,” she said with a smirk. “And I wish you didn’t feel it, either. But I suppose it’s good, in a way. It means that you care for me as much as I care for you.”

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.

Humans had a long, storied history of forcing their way into places where they didn’t belong.

Dr. Chef knew exactly where all of his feelings were, every joy, every ache. He didn’t need to visit them all at once to know they were there. 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.

The only reason Humans stopped killing each other to the extent that you used to, I think, is because your planet died before you could finish the job.

The memories reached out to Dr. Chef, trying to pull him away from his safe observation point. They tugged, begging for him to give in. But he would not. He was not a prisoner of those memories. He was their warden.

I did not start that war. It should never have been mine to fight.”

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

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.

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?”

I love Dr. Chef so much

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.

“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.

I never thought of fear as something that can go away. It just is. It reminds me that I want to stay alive.