The Galaxy, and the Ground Within (Wayfarers, #4)

by Becky Chambers

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.

You had to pause in the face of reflex, ask yourself if the narrative you attached to the knee-jerk was accurate.

The universe was not an object. It was a beam of light, and the colours that it split into changed depending on whose eyes were doing the looking.

Reflexes kept a person safe, but they could also make you stupid.

(but, of course, therein lay the danger; convenience was morality’s most cunning foe).

‘That’s it?’ Roveg intervened. He shared the child’s surprise, but gawking at another’s relatively imminent mortality felt uncouth.

‘I’m more than twice as old as you.’ Xe frowned mightily. ‘Wait, if you can have a shuttle licence, why can’t I?’

But theft is a long, proud tradition for many museums, so that decision’s up to you.’

war was nothing more than an argument in which no one had landed on a better solution than killing each other.

Life was fluid, gradient, ever shifting. People – a group comprised of every sapient species, organic or otherwise – were chaos, but chaos was good.

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...

How convenient for you, to at last work with a species whose bodies are compatible with your bureaucracy.

Our time in this galaxy is, as you have constantly reminded us, limited. We will no longer waste it on waiting for you to do what is right.

He’d been taught that if one person had more than another, feeling guilty about it was the least productive reaction. The only proper way to approach such inequities was to figure out how best to wield them, so as to bring others up to where you stood.

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

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.

These stares, though – issued forth from eyes just like his own – these chipped away at his shell, carving out tiny pieces of himself and leaving them to bleach in the sun.