Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

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?

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

‘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.

When our planet started dying, our species was so caught up in stories. We had thousands of stories about ourselves – that’s still true, don’t forget that for a minute – but not enough of us were looking at the reality of things. Once reality caught up with us an...

There’s sky. There’s ground. There are cities and money and water you can take for granted.

The comforts we’ve invented – or that our neighbours have invented – can become bad if you don’t always, always ask what the potential consequences could be.

‘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.

But if the only reason you want to do it is because you’re looking for a point, you’re going to end up miserable. You’ll float around forever trying to make peace with that.’

when a person tells you what they want of you, they’re not deciding for you. It’s their opinion, not your truth.

the last thing I want is some cocky gifted kid who’s never had to break a sweat. Give me someone who wants it and had to work for it any day.’

Otherwise, you’ll only ever think about other people in the abstract. That’s a poisonous thing, thinking your way is all there is. The only way to really appreciate your way is to compare it to somebody else’s way.

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 – to the comfortable – and that’s a dangerous thing for us short-term thinkers to do.

‘Go out there and see what it’s like to be the alien. Eat something weird. Sleep somewhere uncomfortable.

Evolution is often thought of as a glacial process, but we know from countless examples that this is not always true. Rapid environmental change can prompt rapid physical change.

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

Life meant death, always. But by the same token, death meant life.