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 #7
I'm going to go through my old journals and gather the verses I've written into one volume. I'll put them into one of the exercise notebooks that Cory hands out to the older kids now that there are so few computers in the neighborhood. I've written plenty of useless stuff in these books, getting my high school work out of the way. Now I'll put one to better use. Then, someday when people are able to pay more attention to what I say than to how old I am, I'll use these verses to pry them loose from the rotting past, and maybe push them into saving themselves and building a future that makes sense. (7.11)
Here's an example of the prodigious Lauren at work. She's organizing her Earthseed writings, and that turns out to be super helpful when her Robledo community gets destroyed and she has to tear out of there with few belongings. Notice how even though she's just a teenager, Lauren has a long-term plan—to use her Earthseed verses to help people—and she's working hard to put it into action. That's what you'd call perseverance, right?
Quote #8
I thanked them all for the ongoing—emphasize ongoing—efforts to find my father. Then...well, then I talked about perseverance. I preached a sermon about perseverance if an unordained kid can be said to preach a sermon. No one was going to stop me.
[...]
So I preached from Luke, chapter eighteen, verses one through eight: the parable of the importunate widow. It's one I've always liked. A widow is so persistent in her demands for justice that she overcomes the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him down.
Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn't always safe, but it's often necessary. (12.74-76)
Lauren's totally giving a sermon here—and on perseverance no less. She tells her Robledo community that they must stand firm, despite the disappearance of their leader, her father. Of course, the Robledo community is destroyed not long after this, so the sermon ultimately doesn't help all that much. But what about Zahra, with whom Lauren later teams up? Zahra is persistent, too, in her own way: she survives Richard Moss. Notice how Zahra is absent from this scene. Lauren and Zahra were unable to join up prior to the destruction of Robledo—which goes to show that maybe persistent people are closer to us than we might think.
Quote #9
"We have God and we have each other. We have our island community, fragile, and yet a fortress. Sometimes it seems to small and too weak to survive. And like the widow in Christ's parable, its enemies fear neither God nor man. But also like the widow, it persists. We persist. This is our place, no matter what." (12.79)
Folks, this is pretty ironic. This is our place, no matter what? Hasn't Lauren already decided in the previous chapter to head north once she turns eighteen (11.47-48)? So in many ways, by staying in Robledo, she's clinging to a past world, one that's no longer effective, and in doing so, she's not recognizing that God is change. She's gonna learn pretty quickly.