How we cite our quotes: The main text of the story is cited (Chapter.Paragraph). The date headers are not counted as paragraphs. The verses in the chapters with a single passage from the narrator's religious texts are cited (Chapter.Verse.Line#). In chapters with multiple passages, the verses are cited (Chapter.Verse#.Line#). The four section pages with the years and passages are cited (Year.Verse).
Quote #1
All that you touch
You Change.All that you Change
Changes you.The only lasting truth
Is Change.God
Is Change. (1.Verse.1-8)
This verse passage from Lauren's Earthseed is pretty much her thoughts on change distilled into a few simple lines. She's saying change is everywhere and happening all the time, even to you. Some others have preached this message as well—think of the famous David Bowie Song, or Heraclitus. What's different about Lauren's presentation of the same message is that she's casting it in religious terms and connecting it to social change: at first she tries to improve her Robledo community, and after that fails, she tries to build her own community.
Quote #2
God is Power—
Infinite,
Irresistible,
Inexorable,
Indifferent.
And yet, God is Pliable—
Trickster,
Teacher,
Chaos,
Clay.
God exists to be shaped.
God is Change. (3.Verse2.1-12)
Here's another of Lauren's verses about—guess what—how God is change. Here she's saying God/change exists to be shaped: we can work with it, as if God/change were clay, and in the end, we're trying to produce something. We have to be careful, because God is powerful and indifferent and all that scary stuff, but we can still succeed.
By writing these verses, Lauren is also hyping herself up to believe in her own ability to create change. For her and for those who choose to follow her, it's a kind of positive self-talk. Positive self-talk might be more familiar for those trying to change only themselves—repeating a mantra about sticking to your diet, for example—but it might also be necessary when trying to motivate (or manipulate?) others to change.
Quote #3
Harry woke up, drank a little water, and listened while Zahra told how Richard Moss had bought her from her homeless mother when she was only fifteen—younger than I had thought—and brought her to live in the first house she had ever known. He gave her enough to eat and didn't beat her, and even when her co-wives were hateful to her, it was a thousand times better than living outside with her mother and starving. Now she was outside again. In six years, she had gone from nothing to nothing. (5.12)
Zahra's story illustrates just how dramatically people's lives can change—and how those changes can make a person who at one point isn't considered valuable into someone who is. Zahra's not particularly important to Lauren while they're living in Robledo, but once the community collapses, Zahra's skills from her previous life suddenly become very helpful to Lauren. Perhaps if they'd joined up sooner, Robledo could have been saved, but it seems Richard Moss was in the way of that. Yet Zahra stuck with him because what he provided was better than her past.