Stephen Hardesty

“Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you . . . well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right? Every species does this. Does it again and again and again. Doesn’t matter if they do it to themselves, or another species, or someone they created.’ She jutted her chin toward Tak. ‘You studied history. You know this. Everybody’s history is one long slog of all the horrible shit we’ve done to each other.”
― Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit

“The human race will go marching into that conclusive dark, singing our ballads and telling our stories and embellishing our walls with loafing nudes because that is who we really are: creatures who’ve only begun to believe in the scarce beauty of ourselves, and just in time for the point to be moot.”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Fall of Babel

“We had tens of thousands of ballistic missiles we could pop into low-earth orbit in the blink of an eye so we could obliterate each other on some future day when that perfect mix of nationalism, enmity, and stupidity convinced our kleptocrats that a dead planet was preferable to living under the yoke of some other culture’s facade of good governance.”
― Bobby Adair, Freedom's Fire

“A man who is not suspicious of a philosophy that appeals to his nature is like the bull comforted by the rutted path that leads to the slaughterhouse. —I Sip a Cup of Wind by Jumet”
― Josiah Bancroft, The Hod King