75 Quotes by Sheri S. Tepper

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

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.

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.

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

In secrecy, in silence, a whole race may be destroyed without notice. Whole cultures and species have been destroyed while men smiled and spoke of economics, of employment, of progress, of the welfare of mankind. Is a threat less deadly because it does not scream and rage and threaten force of arms?

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.

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.

Bao is the acceptance that mankind is part of the fabric of the universe, not the purpose of it. Humanity is meant to live as part of creation, not as the owner of it or to make war against it.

The only difference between a futile madman and an effective tyrant is power and will.