Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

For the last several years, Jerry has been much moved by “spiritual” things. Though it’s a word Jerry and his friends use quite comfortably, I’ve never been able to define it. It means non-material things, certainly, but also, non-intellectual, non-measurable, non-factual things. For his friend Marie, it’s a belief in angels, but her husband thinks it’s the feeling he gets when he sits naked in a hot spring, watching the stars.

The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers. I have always lived in a world in which I'm just a spot in history. My life is not the important point. I'm just part of the continuum, and that continuum, to me, is a marvelous thing. The history of life, and the history of the planet, should go on and on and on and on. I cannot conceive of anything in the universe that has more meaning than that.

An itchy man is prey to discontent; he'll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings."
Surely the common man wouldn't want that!"
"What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances.

Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can’t.

The sergeant was braver than most, and stupider—the two qualities often going hand in hand.

It’s hard to talk like a human being when one hasn’t been treated like one for years!

People on Earth engaged in ritual repetition; most of them thought as little as possible; most of them occupied themselves with things and events that were not very important.

I was a free person."
"Free to what?"
"To…to do anything I wanted to."
Jory laughed, shaking her head. "Weren't you told as a child that one way was better than another, one belief better than another? Weren't you told some things were higher and some lower? That some things were suitable for women, others for men? That your God was more powerful? That your religion was truer? That your language was more expressive? That your customs had more heart, or more soul? That your cooking tasted better? That your way of child-rearing was preferable? That all your ways were so much better than others ways that you would die to keep yours as they were, or die to destroy others if they seemed threatening? Weren't you taught not to change, not to adapt, not to become anything different? Weren't you taught the word 'loyalty'? The word 'tradition'? Didn't they tell you that animals were higher than vegetables, mammals were higher than other animals, man was higher than other mammals, and your kind of man was higher than other men?
"You think you weren't enslaved by that? You think you had freedom of choice? I have said this to Fringe, I say it to you: A man's choice becomes his son's duty and his grandson's tradition! Thus men assure enslavement of their progeny.

Humanity is meant to live as part of creation, not as the owner of it or to make war against it.

Not many years before the Happening, one of your country's largest religious bodies officially declared that their book was holier than their God, thus simultaneously and corporately breaking several commandments of their own religion, particularly the first one. Of course they liked the book better! It was full of magic and contradictions that they could quote to reinforce their bigoted and hateful opinions, as I well know, for I chose many parts of it from among the scrolls and epistles that were lying around in caves here and there. They're correct that a god picked out the material; they just have the wrong god doing it.

You have to notice people to be that sure about them.

Great work? he asked.
"The final victory of Almighty God," said Phaed, with a grin. "In the book it is revealed that we shall put whole worlds to the sword." Phaed dusted off a chair and sat down. "So say the prophets, and since they say it, so do I."

A lot of things they speak of doing are things many humans have wanted to do but have never been able to muster a mandate to get them done. Things like legalizing drugs to take out the profit motive. Or paying teachers the way we do athletes, depending on how effective they are. Or getting rid of weapons whose only purpose is to kill people."
"Is a mandate necessary?"
"If you're going to overcome an economic incentive, yes."
"Logic has no part?"
"No part at all. People can see the problem, they're not stupid, but they can't influence the legislators the way money can. Even when bad situations go on and on until the people are desperate for a correction, even when they threaten legislators with voting them out, the money still prevails."
"It is hard for me to see how this could happen."
Chad said, "The legislators react to a problem by writing a law, let's say to put repeat drunk drivers in jail. The liquor industry objects, because they don't like a lot of discussion about drunkenness, it hurts their image. The legislators react by amending the law to create a commission to study how best to jail drunk drivers. Then, when the budget bills come along, they fund only the commission. The appointees to the commission include representatives of the liquor industry.
"This allows the legislators to claim success, because the law got voted in. The liquor industry also claims success, because they made sure the law won't work.
"The next step is to hire a lot of people to work for the commission, many of whom are also liquor industry supporters, and the commission begins to issue long, complicated, vaguely pointless reports. Now, however, there are jobs involved, and legislators can't get rid of jobs, even useless ones.
"Then, repeatedly, the lawmakers amend the law further, tweaking this and changing that, but always adding more jobs—until we have a bureaucratic monstrosity that's in the business of helping the liquor industry prevent legislation against drunk drivers. That's the way our Forestry Service got to be owned by the lumbermen, and our DEA got to be owned by the drug cartels, welfare got to be owned by a social work hierarchy, and schools got to be owned by professional educationalists. None of them work, because that's not what they're designed to do.

"He is a Seer," Mavin said sullenly, aware of her lack of logic.
"Poof. Seers. Sometimes they know everything about something no one cares about. Often they know nothing about something important."

There is no fucking in Hades.