Best 45 quotes of Sheri S. Tepper on MyQuotes

Sheri S. Tepper

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    As vocabulary is reduced , so are the number of feelings you can express, the number of events you can describe, the number of the things you can identify! Not only understanding is limited, but also experience. Man grows by language. Whenever he limits language he retrogresses!

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    Sheri S. Tepper

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

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Conflict acting on intelligence creates imagination. Faced with conflict, creatures are forced to imagine what will happen, where the next threat will come from. If there has never been conflict, imagination never develops. Wits arise in answer to danger, to pain, to tragedy. No one ever got smarter eating easy apples.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Creation has the truth written all over it - the age of the universe, the history of the world - but nine-tenths of mankind either don't know it or think it's a sham, because it isn't what their book or their prophet says, and it isn't cozy or manipulable enough.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Do you realize it’s been only a century that we’ve been able to go from house to car to office to car to wherever, with the heater on, and the defroster on, protected from the rain and the cold? It hasn’t been much longer than that we’ve had lighting for streets. Think of all that darkness, all that world out there, all that mystery that we’ve turned into well-lighted concrete bunkers, safe and warm and dull.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    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.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    I'm not sure a world run by women would be any better. They're human beings!

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    I tell you, lad, that men will believe is one says, "The Gods say..." They will believe if one says, "I had a Vision..." They will believe if one says, "It was told me on a tablet of hidden gold..." But, if one says, "History teaches," then they will not believe.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    I think... girls have a hard time being interesting. It’s actually easier to be famous, or notorious, than it is to be interesting. In our world, girls climb very well until they hit puberty-sexual maturity-and then they begin to fall out of the tree. They start role-playing instead of thinking, flirting instead of learning. They start admiring how smart the boys are-or how athletic or how handsome-instead of concentrating on their own intelligence.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    It may be important to write a book that doesn't come up to what I would like to have rather than to write no book at all.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    I will raise up prophets to make conflicting pronouncements that inevitably will be garbled in transcription, resulting in mutually exclusive definitions of orthodoxy from which the open-minded will flee in dismay.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Science fiction still is an idea genre.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Sitting down and weeping is what women have done for centuries, and it has done no good at all. Nor praying. God has given us the earth. He is not waiting in the next room, ready to fix it for us if we ruin it. If we do not care for it, no one will. On other worlds, other races of men perhaps do better than we have done. He cares for us, but he does not control what we do.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    The expression of divinity is in variety.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    The practice of diplomacy, I have found, is sometimes like eating soup with a fork: much activity yielding little nourishment.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    There are writers who say they have no social responsibility except to write a good book, but that doesn't satisfy me.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    [T]he scripture worshippers put the writings ahead of God. Instead of interpreting God's actions in nature, for example, they interpret nature in the light of the Scripture. Nature says the rock is billions of years old, but the book says different, so even though men wrote the book, and God made the rock and God gave us minds that have found ways to tell how old it is, we still choose to believe the Scripture.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    The sidesaddle was designed to protect a maiden's virginity, while risking the maiden's neck. Rather much for rather little, I thought.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Though this new forest grew mightily, elsewhere the mighty jungles fell. Elsewhere the coastal rain forests that furred the body of the world were torn and riven. Elsewhere the last of the old growth the last of the world's own garment were ripped away. It was in this time, now, that the mother of us all was stripped naked and left to die in shame of her children, she who had been robed in glory like this, adorned like this. I bent my head upon the roots and wept, sorrowing for the trees.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    To me, fantasy has always been the genre of escape, science fiction the genre of ideas. So if you can escape and have a little idea as well, maybe you have some kind of a cross-breed between the two.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    To the Chasmites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar? They have consistently refused to have a god contest, and I fear they will have to encounter the godlet rather forcibly before they believe there is anything there at all.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    We'll tell him his mother waits for him in heaven, I suppose." "Is that a lie?" "It's what we tell fools and children." She sighed. "Postulating a heaven gives man an out for having been unable to retain the paradise he was given here on earth.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    What do I have to say to the universe? A soul ought to have something to say to the universe if it's going to be immortal.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Whoever declares another heretic is himself a devil. Whoever places a relic or artifact above justice, kindness, mercy, or truth is himself a devil and the thing elevated is a work of evil magic.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    With us the inner nature accords with the outer expectation. The body follows the mind, and the mind seeks the soul, which it strives toward but has not yet won. With you it is otherwise. The mind follows the body in pursuit of the soul you have been told you already have. Because you cannot find it, you assume you have lost it somewhere in your past, and this keeps you from achieving it in your future.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    A cada paso, hemos sido frustrados por dios. No el Dios verdadero. Un dios falso creado por el hombre para contribuir a su destrucción de la Tierra. Es el dios-glotón que ve bien engullirlo todo en nombre de una humanidad completamente egoísta. Sus diez mandamientos son: yo primero (déjame vivir como quiera); los humanos primero (que todos los otros seres vivos mueran en mi beneficio); el esperma primero (nada de control de natalidad); los nacimientos primero (nada de abortos); los hombres primero (nada de derechos de la mujer); mi cultura/tribu/religión primero (separatismo/terrorismo); mi raza primero (nada de derechos humanos); mi política primero (puñeteros liberales/podridos reaccionarios); mi país primero (ondea la bandera, la bandera, la bandera); y, sobre todo, los beneficios primero.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    For it would be only for a time. Until what he knew and thought became no longer relevant or necessary and was forgotten. But that was the same with all of us. We were only what we were for a time, at that time. Then our own silver began to mix with the tin of our future to change us. I knew this to be so and grieved for Windlow while I grieved for me. In time I would not be this Peter, even as I now was not the peter of two years ago.... Yet that Peter was not lost.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    (ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will? (ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend. IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    He told us that nations of men fell into disorder, so nations of law were set up instead. He told us that nations of law then forgot justice and let the law become a Game, a Game in which the moves and the winning were more important than truth. He told us to seek justice rather than the Game.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    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: Speaking to the Universe, Locus Magazine, September 1998]

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    - Jeśli jeszcze raz wspomni o Brouerach - powiedziała Marjorie do Rita - to ją uduszę. - Są jej przyjaciółmi - odparł Rico, zerkając na nią z zaciekawieniem. - Najlepszymi przyjaciółmi. Dlaczego ci się to nie podoba? - Nie mówię, że mam coś przeciwko temu. Nie podoba mi się, że stanowią ideał, do którego jestem porównywana. - Wszystkim dzieciakom wydaje się, że inne rodziny są idealne. - Ja nigdy tak nie myślałam. - Owszem, ale ty jesteś dziwna - stwierdził.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Le he pedido a Bill que me lo explicara y él me ha hablado del crecimiento demográfico y la Iglesia católica y la lluvia ácida y la destrucción de los bosques tropicales para conseguir más comida. Todo el mundo discute sobre el tema, me ha dicho. Los economistas y hombres de negocios dicen que nada va mal. Los ecologistas y expertos en población dicen que se acerca el final. Mientras discuten, las cosas seguirán con la misma tendencia hasta que lleguemos al punto sin retorno, que será en algún momento de los próximos cien años. A partir de entonces, no habrá más espacio al aire libre porque cada centímetro cuadrado de tierra será necesario para producir comida.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Me ha hablado de la "presión social", lo que por lo visto quiere decir dejar que los demás te dirijan la vida.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    No sentimentality, no romance, no false hope, no self-petting lies, merely that which is!

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    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.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    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. (The small god in Ch. 44)

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Only fools insist upon life at any cost.... Others would say that life may be laid down when it becomes too heavy. Where does it go, after all, but into the keeping of the Powers who gave it and will give it once again?

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Our ancestors have much to answer for. Why? What did they do? ....Long ago, they used machines and drugs to keep the unhealthy and unfit ones of us alive. In that past time it was believed that all persons must have children. It was a right deemed so precious that it was forced upon even those who did not value it or should not have had it. If one of our people became pregnant, our people used all their knowledge to assure the young would be born, no matter how sick or disabled. Then, if the young lived, they injected them and dosed them and radiated them and transfused and transplanted them, to keep them alive, and then, when they were grown, they used all their skills in assisting them to have children of their own.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Our lives are made up of many things, not just one. Many answers, not just one. It's men that want one answer for everything. They're always making laws, as though they could make one law that would be just in all cases. They can't. They never have. I think men get derailed, sometime during their growing up. Instead of settling for what's honest and real and sort of thoughtful, they go off on these quests. They go strutting and crowing, waving their weapons and shouting their battle cries. They say they're seeking something higher, but it always seems to end in pain, doesn't it?

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    Perhaps it is meant to be hard. Perhaps there are some things so previous that one can only be tested when one is asked to give them up.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    We're so old that the winds of age echo along our ribs and pick at our eye sockets. We could be gone tomorrow. A chill, say, or a little slip on the cliff side. I feel as fragile as a dried flower. I rattle a little in the moving air, but I'm only coherent dust-a shape of what once was. My essence is going.

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    Sheri S. Tepper

    You are holding women to a higher standard than men," he said. "Madame used to tell us that this is traditional, for men have usually been the judges, and they put women either in the gutter or on a pedestal. Men have traditionally forgiven one another, for they know and excuse their own failings, but they do not forgive women for falling off the pedestal." (p. 516)