quotes by 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."
— Sheri S. Tepper (Beauty)

"...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."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The Fresco)

"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)"
— Sheri S. Tepper (The Visitor)

"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."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven)

"...in that look was such love and uncritical adoration as a god might instill into a new create. "Except, how boring at last," he thought. "To have one always, always adoring one. But perhaps gods do not get bored..."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven)

"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."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven)

"Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The Gate to Women's Country)

"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."
— Sheri S. Tepper (The True Game: Kings Blood Four/Necromancer Nine/Wizard's Eleven)