A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers 2021

 

"We don't have to fall into the same category to be of equal value." 

"Most of my kind have a focus - not as sharply focused as Two Foxes or Back Marbled Rockfrog, necessarily, but they have an area of expertise, at least. Whereas I... I like everything."

"'Everybody thinks they're the exception to the rule, and that's exactly where the trouble starts. One person can do a lot of damage.' 'Every living thing causes damage to others, Sibling Dex. You'd all starve otherwise. Have you ever watched a bull elk mow its way through a bitebulb thicket?'"

"How could we continue to be students of the world if we don't emulate its most intrinsic cycle? If the originals had simply fixed themselves, they'd be behaving in opposition to the very thing they desperately sough to understand. The thing we're still trying to understand."

"'So the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.' 'Other than fear.' 'Other than fear, which is a feeling you want to avoid or stop at all costs.' The hardware in Mosscap's head produced a steady hum. 'Yes, that's a mess, isn't it?'"

"'Find the strength to do both,' Mosscap said, quoting the phrase painted on the wagon. 'Exactly,' Dex said. 'But what's both?' Dex recited: 'Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.'" 

"You're an animal, Sibling Dex. You are not separate or other. You're an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good! So do I! But if I wanted to crawl into a cave and watch stalagmites with Frostfrog for the remainder of my days, that would also be both fine and good. You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don't know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don't need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do."  

In the Absence of the Ordinary - Francis Weller 2025

  

"The skill of grieving well enables us to become current - to live in the present moment and be available to the electricity of life. We gradually turn our attention to what is here, now, and pay less attention to our need to repair history. We remember we are more verb than noun, more a jumpy rhythm, a wild song, a fluid leap than a fixed thing in space."

"In his book Beauty: The Invisible Embrace, O'Donohue writes, 'What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach... When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us."

"It is not about resolving our issues or repairing the past but becoming more spacious and capable of holding all that psyche and life brings to us."

"We need to hold, contain, and cook the material before sharing it with the world. It must be allowed o go through its own process of distillation prior to being revealed to questioning eyes. The value of restraint acknowledges this truth and creates a space where something can take shape according to its nature." 

"Let us come to see the value of restraint, of creating space through the practice of not doing. It may be there that we find ourselves escorted into the chamber of what it is the soul truly longs for." 

"Our senses and minds were synchronized to streams and night skies, to times around the fire, to the long, patient wait of the hunger, to the listening to stories told by elders. We moved slowly and drank in the entire spectrum of life through our bodies. We need to take up an apprenticeship with slowness and remember this ancient mode of being." 

"Slow down, uncenter and forget about yourself for a moment, let the world find you, love what is nearby, share your grief with others, say thank you, learn the stories from where you live and from where your ancestors came, be a wee bit wild in your imagination, and come home."

"In the absence of the ordinary, it falls to us to kindle bonds of kinship with all that is near to us. We are at a threshold for our world. In the days to come, everything we do will be significant. Never doubt that each of us is essential to the welfare of the commons. Everyone is a vector. Choose what you spread. It all tuns on affection." 

 

[quotes] The Emperor of Gladness - Ocean Vuong 2025

  

"You lose the dead as the earth takes them, but the living you still have a say in. And so he said it. And so he lied." 

"There was so little to hide from each other by then, their bodies finally scraped clean with each other's gazes."

"If you can be nobody, and stand on your own two feet for as long as I have, that's enough. Look at my girl, all that talent and for what, just to drown in Bud Light? People don't know what's enough, Labas. That's their problem. They think they suffer, but they're really just bored. They don't eat enough carrots." 

"What you see might not always be what you feel. And what you feel may no longer be real. Somewhere inside him the boy believed this law was what turned the planet on its axis."