Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

It is better to die than to be used by evil for evil’s purposes.

This is the problem with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn’t realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn’t realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.

"Each day we investigate all premises within three blocks of the palace. Lookin' for anarchists and revolutionaries, so they tell us, not that we've ever found any. Found a nest of revisionists once, but nobody cared."
"What were they revising?" she asked, truly curious.
"Don't know. Didn't ask 'em."

And of course. Semi in 2 found

He blunders about like an ape in an apiary, infuriating the inhabitants and missing all the sweetness!

And here, there, nosing among the grass roots, will come the hounds, muzzles wrinkling, ears dangling, one foot before another in a slow pace to find it, the inevitable it, the nighttime horror, the eater of young.

Honor is only a label they use for what they want you to do, Chernon. They want you to stay, so they call staying honorable.

I think that some people are hardwired a certain way, and they invent religions to go along with the way they are. Like they are hardwired for bigotry or violence or being ignorant—or maybe ignorance is just a kind of bigotry. People say they don’t want to know a complicated truth, you know, because they already believe something simple, some thing that’s easier on their minds.

All men believed they had their own magics in bed.

Despite Lutha’s undoubted intelligence, she was constantly exploding like fireworks, laughing or crying, passionate about every trifle. On Dinadh, we think of such behavior as typical of children, not serious adults.

Those who encounter chains of events at two disparate points, without observing the connections, think they have observed coincidence when they have, in fact, seen only consequence.

Madame says when we focus on our anger, our vision begins to constrict. Soon we are caught up in fury, and we turn it upon everyone.

We of Betand do not change our laws readily, so says my father, but we interpret them to our needs.

You have not reared him to care what others do, or think, or say. How then should he care for education, for is that not the study of what others care about?

By the time mortal races leave their home planets, many of their gods have already amalgamated with one another. Small tribal godlets are often thrust together through shared execrations. All Death-Honor-and-War gods, for example, are identical. The people may fly different flags, but their gods are happy to drink blood from both sides of the battle.