Sheri S. Tepper quotes - page 8
Each day we investigate all premises within three blocks of the palace. Lookin' for anarchists and revolutionaries, so they tell us, not that we've ever found any. Found a nest of revisionists once, but nobody cared.”
"What were they revising?” she asked, truly curious.
"Don't know. Didn't ask 'em.
Sheri S. Tepper
Morgot and Myra would tell her there wasn't any reason to make promises or seek changes because the Great Mother didn't bargain. The deity didn't change her mind for women's convenience. Her way was immutable. As the temple servers said, "No sentimentality, no romance, no false hopes, no self-petting lies, merely that which is!” Which left very little room, Stavia thought, for womanly initiative.
Sheri S. Tepper
But how is it you know all this about how large the ocean is? I thought you girls were limited to pretty chatter and the economics of housekeeping. I didn't know you learned geography.”
"We don't,” she said, somewhat shamefaced. "But we learned to read, and once one can read, one can learn anything.
Sheri S. Tepper
Why do reporters have to dig into people's privacy?” she fumed.
"Communication is much like sex.”
This set her back. "I don't understand...”
A chuckle. "Being celibate is often wise and prudent. People know this, but the inborn drive to reproduce makes their organs wag. Keeping silent is often wise and prudent. People know this, also, but the drive to question and tell makes their tongues wag. Sex spreads genetic material, good and bad; prying spreads information, true and false; natural selection takes over and both ethical failings contribute to continuing evolution.
Sheri S. Tepper
"Thirty thousand some odd kids starve every day.”
”That's not something we accept!”
"Oh, hell, Senator. Don't feed me the party line. When was the last time any of your colleagues voted for overseas family planning programs? You guys claim it's to prevent abortion, but you know it's not. You know damn well cutting family planning causes more abortions than it prevents, but you still do it. Why? Because most of the pro-life people are anti-contraception, too. And anti-sex education. And anti-gay. And anti-women's-rights. But they're pro-gun, pro-hunting, pro-military. Killing's part of their lives.
Sheri S. Tepper
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.
Sheri S. Tepper
Arnole had time for analysis.
"It is interesting,” he said to himself, "that this small god implied devils were made of ignorance, for I have always believed this to be true. Ignorance perpetuates itself just as knowledge does. Men write false documents, they preach false doctrine, and those beliefs survive to inspire wickedness in later generations. They are like the spells woven by wizards, lying in wait for the credulous to find them and uses them. Conversely, some men write and teach the truth, only to be declared heretic by the wicked. In such cases, evil has the advantage, for it will do anything to suppress truth, but the good man limits what he will do to suppress falsehood.
"One might almost make a rule of it: "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.”.
Sheri S. Tepper
We have a membership provided the ISTO doesn't declare all Earthians a barbarian people.”
"I don't know what that means,” I persisted, even though this wasn't strictly part of the subject.
Father gritted his teeth. "ISTO recognizes four types of creatures: civilized, semicivilized, barbarians, and animals. Civilized people know about, care about, and protect their environments. Semicivilized people know and care, but can't do anything...”
"Why not?”
Mother said, "Because something prevents their acting in their own self-interest. Public apathy. Commercial interference. Religious opposition. Governmental corruption. The Gentherans say the humans have a lot of that.”
Father frowned at her and went on. "Barbarians know but don't care about their worlds, and animals don't even know.
Sheri S. Tepper
I never read an author twice if I can't trust him or her to make it come out right. I never read an author twice if he writes the kind of books where everyone and everything is in tension from page one to the last paragraph of the last page, like that dreadful TV show, 24. Tension is something I have plenty of in life. I don't need it elsewhere.
Sheri S. Tepper
You don't remember your first ancestors. You have no memory of ninety-nine percent of what makes you what you are! Instead you have comfy baby-stories you tell yourselves to explain why you're not good people. What sin you committed or how you didn't do with this god or that god told you. Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven and carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe the baby-stories than to learn from history and science, because it takes brains and hard study to understand history and science, but the stories are simple and comfy. People who want things easy and comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories and tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven, and gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else. It's happened time after time on Earth.
Sheri S. Tepper
