“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see the world around them. You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 140)
“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 watned 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.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 138)
“We teach that purpose doesn’t come from the gods but from ourselves. That the gods can show us good resources and good ideas, but the work and the choice—especially the choice—is our own. Deciding on your purpose is one of the most valuable things there is. ‘And that purpose can change, yes?’ ‘Absolutely. You’re never stuck.'”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 136)
“If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves. And that’s what I learned in that shrine. I thought, wow, y’know, a cup of tea may not be the most important thing in the world—or a steam bath, or a pretty garden. They’re so superfluous in the grand scheme of things. But the people who did actually important work—building, feeding, teaching, healing—they all came to the shrine. It was the little nudge that helped important things get done.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 135)
“She sat down with us, and I don’t remember what she asked me. I don’t remember what we said. What I do remember is her treating me like an adult. Like a whole person, I guess. She asked me what I was feeling, and I rambled, and she listened. I wasn’t some awkward kid to her—I mean, I was an awkward kid, but she didn’t make me feel that way.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 134)
“I think there’s something beautiful about being lucky enough to witness a thing on its way out.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 99)
“‘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?'”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 96)
“Decay was a built-in function of the City’s towers, crafted from translucent casein and mycelium masonry. Those walls would, in time, begin to decompose, at which point they’d either be repaired by materials grown for that express purpose, or, if the building was no longer in use, be reabsorbed into the landccape that had hosted it for a time. But a Factory Age building, a metal building—that was of no benefit to anything beyond the small creatures that enjoyed some temporary shelter in its remains. It would corrode until it collapsed. That was the most it would achieve. Its only legacy was to persist where it did not belong.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 90)
“For all Dex’s protesting about the sanctity of trails, it was only in absence that Dex truly understood what a trail was. They had been on hikes through protected lands before and had ridden through more untended places than they could count in their years on the tea route. Those experiences had been soothing, calming, somewhat meditative. It did not take much brain to make your feet follow a path, and that meant your thoughts had ample room to drift and slow. Walking through uncut wilderness was another matter entirely, and Dex felt something primal awaken in them, a laser-focused state of mind they hadn’t known they possessed. There was no room for wandering fancies. All Dex could think was: watch the root, go left, that looks poisonous, mind that rock, is that safe, soft dirt, okay, go right, avoid that, careful, careful, CAREFUL. With every step, there were dozens of variants, and with each step after, the rules changed yet again. Travel on a trail felt liquid. Travel off of it, Dex was learning, felt sharp as glass.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 86)
“Mosscap touched their metal torso, smiling with pride. ‘I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 75)
“‘Robots are not people. We’re machines, and machines are objects. Objects are its.’ ‘I’d say you’re more than just an object,’ Dex said. The robot looked a touch offended. ‘I would never call you just an animal, Sibling Dex.’ It turned its gaze to the road, head held high. ‘We don’t have to fall into the same category to be of equal value.'”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 69)
“Nobody in the world knows where I am right now, they thought, and the notion of that filled them with bubbling excitement. They had canceled their life, bailed out on a whim. The person they knew themself to be should’ve been rattled by that, but someone else was at the helm now, someone rebellious and reckless, someone who had picked a direction and gone for it as if it were of no more import than choosing a sandwich. Dex didn’t know who they were, in that moment. Perhaps that was why they were smiling.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 47)
“Dex was the best tea monk in Panga, if the chatter was to believed. They didn’t believe such hyperbole themself, and it’s not like anything about their work was a competition. But their tea was good. They knew this. They’d worked hard. They put their heart into it. Everywhere they went, they saw smiles, and Dex knew that it was their work—their work!—that brought those out. They brought people joy. They made people’s day. That was a tremendous thing, when you sat and thought about it. That should’ve been enough. That should’ve been more than enough. And yet, if they were completely honest, the thing they had come to look forward to most was not the smiles nor the gifts nor the sense of work done well, but the part that came after all of that. The part when they returned to their wagon, shut themself inside, and spent a few precious, shapeless hours entirely alone.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 38)
“Ms. Jules took her tea to the comfy cushions, and—in what looked like it might be the first time that day—sat down. She closed her eyes and let out a tremendous sigh. Her shoulders visibly slumped. She’d always had the ability to relax them; she’d just needed permission to do so.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 33)
“Dex did not know any of the roads there, nor any of the people who waved as bike and wagon zipped past. There was a strange comfort about being in an unfamiliar town not too far from home, where the familiarity was limited to building materials and social customs. It was the ideal mix of getting away yet not standing out.”
Becky Chambers, A Psalm For The Wild-Built (Page 21)
A Psalm For The Wild Built [Book]
![A Psalm For The Wild Built [Book] by Becky Chambers](https://movemequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Psalm-For-The-Wild-Built.jpg "A Psalm For The Wild Built [Book] by Becky Chambers")
Book Overview: In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, bestselling Becky Chambers’s delightful new Monk and Robot series, gives us hope for the future. It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend. One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They’re going to need to ask it a lot. Becky Chambers’s new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?