Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

Those of us from Chasm started calling it the Visitor because that's a relatively comfortable label. It implies the stay is temporary, that the thing will go away. We think the Visitor must be part of a race of beings who live in space, though we're guessing at that. We also postulate that they hitch rides on bits of space trash that are moving somewhere, like the huge one that came at us. Anyhow, the Visitor is getting closer by the day.

Nothing limits intelligence more than ignorance; nothing fosters ignorance more than one's own opinions; nothing strengthens opinions more than refusing to look at reality.

Theoretical liberties, however, we are too often assured at the expense of actual civilities, and as civilities were lost, litigation emerged as a way of life with a consequent reduction in real liberties for all persons except lawyers, who, like mercenaries, are profiteers of discord. Persons were actually allowed, by law, under the guise of free expression, to shout into the faces of those who held differing opinions and to intrude upon their privacy. Liberty has two legs. Vigilance is certainly one, but civility is as certainly the other.

Personal beliefs are unarguable, even if the other side has all the facts.

Myra subsided into outraged and sulky silence. Her romantic dream of motherhood had been riven into sharp-edged fragments by late-night feedings, constant diaper washing, and a baby who persisted in looking and acting like a baby, not like a young hero.

I reflected that a little taste of power could take a reasonably sensible person and make some kind of groveling, cringing thing of him.

Over time, a very nice system had developed by which persons actually interested in religion as religion (rather than religion as a system of social control, religion as politics, religion as warfare, or religion as spectacle) met over luncheon from time to time to read their scholarly research to one another, while clerks and aides got on with the endless and self-generating paperwork, or so it was still called, despite the fact there was little or no paper involved.

Boys play with death as though it were a game, cutting their teeth on daggers.

Think of how much time and effort it would have saved if we’d only known what man’s destiny actually was. Think of our time, all the fundamentalist fascists versus the civil libertines; all the liberals throwing our money at the poor versus the conservatives throwing our money at themselves; all the male versus female controversies, all the revolutions, sexual, political, and economic. How marvelous if we’d only known what was important and what wasn’t!

She concluded: “Legalization would drive prices down, crime would stop, then we could take care of the addicts...”
“And you do not do this because of...politics?”
The Secretary of State said, “The war against drugs is big business. Thousands of people are on the payroll. The people on the payroll don’t want the problem solved, though they can’t say that out loud or, perhaps, even admit it to themselves. Instead, they continue to take a moral position that requires them to punish people. Punishing people is always considered moral.”

Each race creates its own devils. You had so many that they specialized. Devils of racial hatred, devils of greed and violence. Devils who killed their own people in orgies of blood. Devils who bombed clinics, devils who bombed school buses, devils who bombed other devils. I got to know every one of them by name. As soon as I arrived, I sent my monsters out to kill them all. They had tarnished my reputation, and though I have lavished much care on mankind, vengeance is mine.

If we can."
"No matter if you can or not. You must."
Anger bested her. "That's not logical. That's completely arbitrary. To demand that someone do something he may not be able to do."
"We have consulted Files." The voice bubbled with hideous laughter. "Gods often demand that people do things they cannot do or things that are dangerous or onerous or hateful. And when the people fail, gods punish them. Should I be less a god than they?

There is nothing so delightful, so pure, so innocent or enjoyable that some group has not forbidden it.

They looked like men. That was the trouble with devils, Carolyn thought. Too often they looked like men.

It went on, “If you accuse, then you must judge.”
“You let your accusers be your judges?” asked Peter, astounded.
“Who else should be satisfied?” it asked. “If one’s accusers cannot be satisfied, what is justice?”
“One’s accusers might be mad,” Peter suggested, very unwisely I thought, considering where we were. “Mad, and incapable of being satisfied.”