Sierra

“You were capable of imagining a different future. And maybe it won’t be realized today, maybe not in our lifetime. Maybe it will take generations. We’re all part of a continuum. Does that make it pointless?”
― Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“The past she carried with her did not have to be a heavy thing, and when she needed to rest, she could put it down.”
― Ava Reid, A Theory of Dreaming

“There wasn't much left, but in Leningrad in the siege in the war the curators stayed and ate restorer's paste to stay alive and wrapped the dead and laid them in the basement until the thaw and chipped the ice off the paintings while the siege went on outside. All that mattered was that the art remained. Even if they could have run away across Lake Ladoga and into the edges of the taiga forest and hidden with what they knew, they wouldn't have left. They belonged to the art and the art belonged to them and it was a sacred duty. But so was the vision of what it would be one day when the siege was over and the windows replaced and the broken walls repaired and the museum alive again for everyone, for the world that mattered, the one they wanted.”
― Eiren Caffall, All the Water in the World

“I look up and see the stars.

Well, no. It's daytime. But I see pinpoints of day in irregular patterns across the curved upper surface of what must be a ridiculously tall chamber. Definite patterns, and there's no way I can talk myself out of seeing it as anything other than a map. A star map...The ancient cultures of Earth have imbued the stars with significance since prehistory. Why wouldn't you? They're your calendar and your clock, the universe's own way of measuring the year for you. I stand there in the dark, and for a moment I can forget the dire peril we're in because a wave of wonder washes over me. The thought that maybe this is a constant of intelligence, anywhere you can see the sky and have eyes to do it with. Does all life of sufficient complexity look up after sunset and wonder at the lights and what they mean?”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alien Clay