Sheri S. Tepper quotes - page 7
The Regime has become so smug it can't tell the difference among the revolutionary, the innovative, or the merely various. The high command knows so little about the outside that if I came back with a fully equipped chemical laboratory and told them I'd found it in a cave, they'd probably believe that, so long as I brought it back piecemeal in my saddle bags, thus proving I hadn't known it was there beforehand.
Sheri S. Tepper
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.
Sheri S. Tepper
Forgive my mentioning it. If you are like most young men, you hate having it mentioned.”
Mavin could not help laughing. "I hate having it mentioned. Yes. Perhaps...” She paused a moment before going on, "it is because young people are not that sure they are competent.”
"There is always that,” agreed the Seer. "But that feeling does not necessarily diminish with age. It is merely challenged less frequently. When one has over sixty years, as I do, then the world assumes we would not have survived without competence. With someone your age, it could always be sheer luck.
Sheri S. Tepper
And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are.”
I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the tea cup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. "Pain of being as I am? I don't understand.”
"But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?
Sheri S. Tepper
This is the problem with too much Schooling. One learns to manipulate the labels in a way that the Gamesmistresses approve, and one doesn't realize that things do not always act in accordance with the labels in the real world. One doesn't realize that the labels, come to that, are often wrong.
Sheri S. Tepper
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.”.
Sheri S. Tepper
The tallest Father preached. He stood before us in robes of gleaming white, surrounded by the smoke of sweet incense, fondling his groin from time to time as he talked of St. Phallus. St. Phallus loomed behind the altar, erect, massive, as though ready to rape the world. It was not the first such monument I had seen. Wherever men were ignorant and hungry for power, I had seen these things, though never one as large as this. Father fondled his groin and preached.
"Holy fruit of St. Phallus,” he said.
"Clean seed planted in filthy ground,” he said.
"Corrupted by dirty woman-wombs,” he said.
Sheri S. Tepper
To us it does not seem that long ago, possibly because our children hear stories told around the fire of things which happened fifteen centuries back. Such stories carry an immediacy one does not get from books....”
"Which is why some countries carry such old grudges,” offered Marianne. "What children learn at their grandmas' knees they act upon as though it happened yesterday.”
He nodded gravely, even sadly. "Perhaps that is true. Those who have an oral tradition full of old wrongs and old revenge do seem to fight the same battles forever. If the Irish were not forever singing of their ancient wrongs-or writing poetry about it...well, we see the result in every morning's newspapers.
Sheri S. Tepper