Sierra

“All along, for weeks now, some part of her mind had been consumed with it: the certainty that the face she'd glimpsed among the dancers in the desert ruin was the face of God. It was the Queen of Heaven, Thalia. Back before. In another life.

Human hands had made the idol. And then they did, they'd had a human face in mind. That was the nucleus. The seed. The flash of warmth. Heretical as it was, as little sense as it made, she knew there was a person in there.”
― Grace Curtis, Idolfire

“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

“Artifacts are physical proof of what people in ancient times achieved, achievements that the past few centuries of colonization and other upheavals cannot erase. But artifacts sitting on a shelf, behind glass, can take us only so far into the minds of other people. To reach them on that deeper level, we need to inhabit their world—to endure their frustrations and revel in their joys, to touch and smell and taste everything they took for granted, so we no longer will. We need to feel the fabric of their lives. And experimental archaeology—living archaeology—can do that in a way that no other field can.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations

“But greed like that didn't start out bad. What alters wanting is what's behind it. Greed and hope aren't opposites. Greed and hope are twins grabbing for the same thing, one in fear and one in faith.”
― Eiren Caffall, All the Water in the World