Quotes from Sheri S. Tepper

Like frogs, each thinking its own puddle was the center of the universe, we believed that God worried over us each of us. Strange that we should realize Pride is a sin yet still be willing prey to such arrogance.

One listened and one remembered. I listened as best I could, but there were no hooks in my head to hang much of it on.

Much of life, he said to me, depends on our being ignorant of reality. If we understood reality, we would never go on.

do whatever it was they expected her to do because they were always expecting her to do something more or be something more until it didn't feel like there was enough of her left to go around.

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.

along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain. On either side the gutters ran with an infant chuckle and gurgle, baby streams being amused with themselves. The

Humanity is meant to live as part of creation, not as the owner of it or to make war against it.

Power is power as the sun is the sun, the wind is the wind. The villager blesses the rain as it falls on his crops; the pillager uses it to cover his approach. It is the wielder who determines the good or evil.

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

There was an expression on her face at certain times, an expression of unconscious joy which came from a part of her he had always coveted, a separate being he never saw when he was with her. He had seen that being in the arena or the hunt, skimming the green pastures towards the high fences, all there between the posts and over the water, winging on danger and delight, a bird soaring with a singing face. He wanted to hold that bird.

Rich people didn't get in that kind of mess. They never had. Only the poor got trapped: by ignorance, by religion, by self-righteous laws passed by people who broke them with impunity.

Lately I feel that I'm living in a badly written, badly directed foreign movie that's running on late-night TV in black-and-white with lots of static and inadequate subtitles.

The ancient lizard mind lies below the mammalian mind, which lies below a primate mind, which is modified by a mind adapted to language, and since these layers have developed in response to differing evolutionary pressures, they often do not function efficiently together. Human civility tries to control ape dominance, human rationality tries to control mammalian sexuality, human social conscience tries to ameliorate reptilian greed, never with total success.

Decirle a la gente lo que realmente piensas es a menudo una idea malísima. Como solía decir la abuela, la gente sensata vierte aceite en aguas revueltas, no nitroglicerina.

It seems to me sometimes all beauty is dying. Which makes me hope that perhaps it isn't dead but only sleeping. And that makes me think of Sleeping Beauty and wonder if she, Beauty that is, might not be a metaphor for what is happening to the world at large: perfect Beauty born, Beauty cursed with death, Beauty dying - but with the magical hope of being reawakened, maybe by love.

Well, strangeness was hard to think about. Wonder grazes you like a bullet; it zips by and is gone, and all you really perceive is the zing as it goes past, or maybe the pain if it comes too close. It does no good to search for whatever it was, for it never lodges anywhere you can get a good look at it. The truly strange has no hooks of familiarity that one can catch hold of.

Many humans prefer tiny gods," said the Gardener. "Tiny gods of limited preoccupations…

Time went by, swift but interminable. Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.

You have to notice people to be that sure about them.

All the questions had been reduced to doctrine; all the doctrine had been simplified to catechism; all the catechism had been learned long ago.

And in the end, unable to feel terror, mankind will go, we will all go down, down, down to happyland.

I know how to get you over that. I've done it before. Just call me Dr. Pat.

Star calls to star: "Here I am, who is like me?" Tree calls to tree: "I am I, who knows me?

They make a mess," Jared told her. "Tulip foliage dies and turns an ugly yellow. Pansies aren't hardy. The bloom stalks on lavender drop their buds. Violets seed themselves." His tone of voice made it clear that seeding oneself was a perversion.