The Relentless Moon (Lady Astronaut Universe #3)

by Mary Robinette Kowal

“Like Julius Caesar, we must prepare for the worst,” said Norman Clemons, director of the International Aerospace Coalition, “that is our training. But we also strive for the best,

That’s the problem with taking off something that doesn’t quite fit. Putting it back on is harder.

It is hard, sometimes, to spot the line between a desire to help and ambition.

When you see a woman with stitches in her chin and ask her what she did to make her husband angry. There are two scenarios. The first is that she’s happily married and you’ve insulted their relationship. The other is that her husband is abusive and she will not thank you for endangering her by drawing attention to it. In the range of possibilities in between, there’s not a single one in which a joke about being a battered woman is funny.

Recognizing a cycle and being able to stop said cycle are not the same thing.

Every word Nathaniel sent to Elma was true. It’s amazing how many lies one can tell with the truth.

He didn’t seem to understand that the Earth was like the Titanic. It was going to go down. We didn’t have enough lifeboats for everybody, but that didn’t mean we shouldn’t try to save as many people as we could.

The ritual sequence of sitting and standing gave me space in which to calm myself. This is the value of ritual and repetition, be it in a cockpit or in a church pew. Familiarity gives us room to breathe and to think.