They haven’t learned that being penitent sometimes does no good at all. - Sheri S. Tepper

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."

Most boys moved when they started having love affairs—or thinking about having love affairs. Just thinking could go on for a considerable time without anything really happening, not like those marriage cultures, where all the women were trying to cling to their virginity and all the males were trying to take it away from them, everybody panting and rushing, trying to grab off acceptable partners under acceptable conditions before they got too old.

There's a lot of fathering in those legends, Sal commented, disapprovingly. "A lot of fathering, a lot of kinging, a lot of death and violence, and very little uncleing and ordinary kindly living."