Once we’re grown, all we can hear are what the poet described: the echoes, dying. - Sheri S. Tepper

Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstacy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. Mankind accepts good fortune as his due, but when bad occurs, he thinks it was aimed at him, done to him, a hex, a curse, a punishment by his deity for some transgression, as though his god were a petty storekeeper, counting up the day’s receipts…

If a society thinks it needs weapons, it must accept killing. If it thinks it needs violent men, it must accept rapine and assault.

There are those who must find fault somewhere, among the dead if they cannot find enough among the living.