Maia

“You can’t go back,” she told him bluntly. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. “That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is ‘supposed to be.’ ” She lifted her eyes and her gaze stabbed him. “Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.”
― Robin Hobb, Mad Ship

“There was no way they were doing this. Obviously not. They were a fucking tea monk, not an academic or a scientist, or any of the myriad professions infinitely better suited to facilitating the first contact between humans and robots in two hundred years.”
― Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“Your livelihoods? Is that what concerns you? Do you not have more care for your lives? For these men would press you to give them up, to abandon your children, and those you love.”
― Nikki Marmery, Lilith