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To Be Taught, If Fortunate QUOTES

To Be Taught, If Fortunate QUOTES

1 " Even if nothing ever does go wrong, I have to prepare as though it might. "

― Becky Chambers , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

2 " ...sometimes we go, and we try, and we suffer, and despite it all, we learn nothing. Sometimes we are left with more questions than when we started. Sometimes we do harm, despite our best efforts. We are human. We are fragile. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

3 " Chikondi is not interested in sex, with me or anyone else. But when he comes to my cabin, we engage in another kind of sharing, one that's every bit as good and every bit as intimate. "

― Becky Chambers , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

4 " At some point, you have to accept the fact that any movement creates waves, and the only other option is to lie still and learn nothing. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

5 " I forcibly conjured memories of that lush world, but they had become bittersweet. I knew that those smiles would fade, those adventures would end. All days on Mirabilis led to Opera. To look at them was to look back on the path that had led to howling and skittering and sleepless nights. The ache to return to a time long gone was almost worse than fear. "

― Becky Chambers , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

6 " We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship – to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

7 " We celebrate the tree that stretches to the sky, but it is the ground we should ultimately thank. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

8 " A moth was a caterpillar, once, but it no longer is a caterpillar. It cannot break itself back down, cannot metamorphose in reverse. To try to eat leaves again would mean starvation. Crawling back into the husk would provide no shelter. 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... I could not have predicted each version of me that I shifted into, but through my history, one constant has always remained true: change itself... I did not know who she was, the one waiting for me to start moving toward her. I was curious about her, all the same. I was eager to meet her. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

9 " Don't believe the lie of individual trees, each a monument to its own self-made success. A forest is an interdependent community. Resources are shared, and life in isolation is a death sentence. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

10 " It is difficult to give thought to the stars when the ground is swallowing you up. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

11 " The amount a person can spare is relative; the value of generosity is not. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

12 " We exist where we begin, yet to remain is death. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

13 " I'm an observer, not a conqueror. I have no interest in changing other worlds to suit me. I choose the lighter touch: changing myself to suit them. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

14 " I know how much a world can change within the bookends of a lifetime. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

15 " ...a home can only exist in a moment. Something both bound and made. Always temporary, in the grand scheme of things, but vital all the same. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

16 " The ache to return to a time long gone was almost worse than fear. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

17 " It's understandable why humans stopped living in space in the 2020s. How can you think of the stars when the seas are spilling over? How can you spare thought for alien ecosystems when your cities are too hot to inhabit? How can you trade fuel and metal and ideas when the lines on every map are in flux? How can anyone be expected to care about the questions of worlds above when the questions of the world you're stuck on — the most vital criteria of home and health and safety — remain unanswered? "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

18 " It’s difficult to assign value to discovery when you haven’t sorted out the parameters of reality yet. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

19 " And worst of all, we knew this could happen. We've been impotently worrying about what a solar flare could do to electronic infrastructure since the 1900s. But my generation was so preoccupied with fixing the mess left by the unaddressed-and-fully-known-about environmental disaster of the previous generation that we committed the same sin of criminal procrastination against yours. I ask no forgiveness for this, because we deserve none. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate

20 " If I ask what I'm asking only of people who agree with me at the outset, with whom I already share a dream and a language, then there's no point in asking at all. "

― , To Be Taught, If Fortunate