Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sheri S. Tepper
Sheri S. Tepper

Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

Author

Filter quotes by topic

AllWorldMenIfsBelieveThinkingWellsBookLittlesUniverseChildren

Famous Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

“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.”

LoveCountryWomenChoiceChildBetrayDeadUtopiaKillDystopiaSheriTepper
Book:The Gate to Women's Country
Create image

“The sadness of men- mankind, I guess you'd say. It's that we never have time to be what we know we should be, or could be. And it's not because of the time itself, the gods know we waste enough of it not doing anything at all, but because of what we are.... It's caring so much that keeps us from being what we could be. Caring so much. About the wrong things maybe. But still, if we didn't what would we be?”

PurposeSadnessCaring
Book:Southshore
Create image

“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]”

WorldHumanityUniverseHistorySocietyMankindContinuityContinuumIndividuals
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“The 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.”

ReligionIntelligent DesignWillful Ignorance
Book:The Fresco
Create image

“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.”

ReligionFantasy
Book:The Visitor
Create image

“—Me dijeron que las verdades eternas… —¿Cómo cuáles —Dios se rió—. ¡Si hubiera alguna verdad eterna Yo lo sabría ¡He creado todo un cosmos basado en el cambio y un ser minúsculo viene aquí para hablarme de verdades eternas —No quería ofenderte. Es sólo que… Bueno sí no hay verdades eternas ¿cómo podemos saber dónde está la verdad —No me has ofendido. Nunca creo cosas capaces de ofenderme. En cuanto a la verdad la verdad es lo que está escrito. Todas las cosas de la creación llevan mis intenciones escritas en sí mismas. Las rocas las estrellas los seres minúsculos… Para cada cosa sólo hay un camino natural el camino que Yo he concebido para ella. El problema es que los seres minúsculos escriben libros que contradicen a las rocas y luego dicen que Yo escribí los libros y que las rocas son mentiras. —Se rió. El universo tembló—. Inventan reglas de conducta que ni los ángeles pueden obedecer y dicen que Yo las he ideado. El orgullo de la autoría… —Dejó escapar una risita—. Dicen: «Oh estas palabras son eternas así que deben de haber sido escritas por Dios».”

DiosVerdades Eternas
Book:Grass
Create image

“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.”

WorldChildrenBodyLastsMotherDiesLeftGrowthTreeGrewGloryRainRootsShameForestsNakedElsewhereBentTornJungleGarmentsRippedCoastal
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

MindHas BeensSoulBodyPastLostAchieveExpectationsAssumingStrivePursuitOur FutureOur PastStrifeYour FutureYour PastAccord
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

IfsKnowsBelieveLittlesLongFoundDifferencesKnownProveVariousCommandRevolutionaryBagsChemicalsRegimesCavesInnovativeLaboratorySaddles
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

IfsHappensPainNextEasyImaginationAnswersActingImagineDangerConflictCreaturesEatingTragedyThreatTheatreWitAriseApplesSmarter
Book:Sheri S Tepper SF Gateway Omnibus: After Long Silence, Shadow's End, Six Moon Dance
Create image

“[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.”

MenWayWritingYearsMindBelieveMadeStillsBookDifferentLightActionFoundRocksExampleBillionsScriptureInterpretingWorshippersWillful Ignorance
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWorldWellsAbleHouseRealizingDarknessMysteryStreetsCenturyCarColdSafeOfficeRainWarmDullConcreteProtectedLightingBunkers
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

ThinkingWorldWellsHardFallGirlInterestingBoysRolesTreeEasierSmartMaturityHard TimesClimbsOur WorldFlirtingHandsomeAthleticConcentratingPubertyAdmiringNotoriousRole Playing
Book:The family tree
Create image

“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.”

WorldShouldImportantLife IsUniversePlanetsGoes OnSpotsMarvelousContinuumMarvelous ThingsHistory Of Life
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image

“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.”

IfsMenWorldDoeDoneCareEarthNextGivenWaitingRoomsRaceCenturyReadyPrayingSittingDown AndRuinsWeepingOther WorldsSitting Down
Author:Sheri S. Tepper
Create image