Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

"How is that possible?"
"To a Wizard, anything is possible," the Dervish said with more than a hint of scorn. "Or so they lead themselves to believe."

Fear needn’t be grounded in fact to cause problems.

Warriors are those who desire battle more than peace. Those who seek battle despite peace. Those who thump their spears on the group and talk of honor. Those who leap high in the battle dance and dream of glory....

The good of dead warriors, Mother, is that they are dead.

The prophetess had declared it a sin to believe in absolute truths, but the Scrutators claimed that didn’t apply to religious truths, of which they had manufactured a good supply over the centuries.

You reacted to stop the Mahahmbi killing your women, but you did nothing about their killing other women. It’s clear you could have done something. You are numerous enough that you could have killed the Mahahmbi who came out into the desert to perform those rituals!

and there upon the vast prairies, will be the fox. The mighty fox. The implacable fox. The fox who knows they are coming.

I know how to get you over that. I’ve done it before. Just call me Dr. Pat.

When love wasn’t fun, it was just boring and dull and achy.

We have a membership provided the ISTO doesn't declare all Earthians a barbarian people."
"I don't know what that means," I persisted, even though this wasn't strictly part of the subject.
Father gritted his teeth. "ISTO recognizes four types of creatures: civilized, semicivilized, barbarians, and animals. Civilized people know about, care about, and protect their environments. Semicivilized people know and care, but can't do anything…"
"Why not?"
Mother said, "Because something prevents their acting in their own self-interest. Public apathy. Commercial interference. Religious opposition. Governmental corruption. The Gentherans say the humans have a lot of that."
Father frowned at her and went on. "Barbarians know but don't care about their worlds, and animals don't even know.

There was a great mob of the Oracle’s Brotherhood, dancing in their ribbons, chanting and shouting in a zealot’s parody of purpose, a frantic anarchy that could see no farther than the next bit of inflammatory oratory being shouted on every corner.

You think staying in power is why they do it?"
"That's usually the reason for arbitrary cruelty.

Though this new forest grew mightily, elsewhere the mighty jungles fell. Elsewhere the coastal rain forests that furred the body of the world were torn and riven. Elsewhere the last of the old growth the last of the world’s own garment were ripped away. It was in this time, now, that the mother of us all was stripped naked and left to die in shame of her children, she who had been robed in glory like this, adorned like this. I bent my head upon the roots and wept, sorrowing for the trees.

The sidesaddle was designed to protect a maiden's virginity, while risking the maiden's neck. Rather much for rather little, I thought.

All kids think some other family is perfect.

Also, the people who've left tended to be those who thought man was more important than other parts of creation, and themselves more important than other men, Africa mused. "Me-and-my-image devotees. Human fertility worshippers. The kind of people who will happily kill other species to make room for more humans, advocates of the old 'fill up the world and ruin it' philosophy."