Sheri S. Tepper Quotes

Source: Beauty

Strange Horizons interview (2008)

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor (p. 465)
The Visitor (2002)

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 385)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 32)

Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper <!-- p. 41 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Long ago, the people of the world cried out for help. In the reaches of heaven their cry was heard, and a Visitor came in answer to it. The Visitor began helping immediately, but secretly. Now the visitor intends to be known to the people of the world and the people of the world must deal with that knowledge.

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 44 : the visitor
Context: "This place is a godland, you may call me god. Small g, for I am not proud. We are a race evolving in this Creation to serve the Maker of it. We act as temporary deities during the childhood of individual peoples and planets. I was the midwife who brought forth this world, who stirred the primordial ooze, and noted the life that crawled up from the sea. Our race is not unlike yours, but I am very old, and you are still very young."
"We come and go. I came to teach your people language. I raised up oracles, whispered to soothsayers, wove bright visions for sorcerers, and spoke marvels to your alchemists. I came again to raise up prophets in the the Real One's name: Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Fermi..."
The doctor interrupted, "The Real One? Who?"
"The Being whom I worship. The Ultimate who stands apart from time. The Deity some men think they are addressing when they pray with words. The Real One doesn't even perceive words. If IT did, imagine what IT would have to listen to! The Real One sees only the pattern of what is, where it begins and where it comes to rest. The only prayer IT perceives is action. … Only actions enter the pattern the Real One sees. What is. What was done. IT perceives neither intentions nor remorse."

Locus interview (1998)
Context: The only people who have the long view are some scientists and some science fiction writers. 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.

Guardian Galenor in Ch 43 : various pursuits<!-- 418 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: People allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. 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…

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (pp. 140-141)

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Occasionally, I will do a conspicuous miracle to save one dying child while a thousand children starve elsewhere. This will convince sensible people I am perverse, and they will curse my name. Be sure to recruit those who do, they'll be invaluable. Only by repudiating both devils and small gods will they ever know the Real One.

Guardian Dismé Latimer in Ch. 46 : nell latimer's journal<!-- , p. 498 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: To the Chasmites, truth is determined by how well it fits their expectations, and doesn't that sound familiar?... They have consistently refused to have a god contest, and I fear they will have to encounter the godlet rather forcibly before they believe there is anything there at all.

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: I say the entities that are named as gods by Earthians are imagined into being by Earthians as personal helper-buddies, justifiers, threateners (my god can beat up your god). They don't "run on" anything any more than a mirror image "runs on" anything. They merely reflect what people want them to be. "I want to have more children than my brother does, thus proving I'm a better man than he is, so my god tells me I should have a big family." "I want to screw women, so my god is going to give me seventy virgins I can screw for all eternity." The "gods" in The Margarets who could really do anything were actually an old, highly evolved race of real people. The others were only reflections. The real God, who may really exist, is outside all that, perhaps watching closely, perhaps merely asleep for a few trillion years while the experiment runs out.
We — thee and me as individuals — will never know that God, though after a few trillion years, the universe as a whole may come to understand that God.

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: 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.

Locus interview (1998)
Context: To my mind, the expression of divinity is in variety, and the more variable the creation, the more variable the creatures that surround us, botanical and zoological, the more chance we have to learn and to see into life itself, nature itself. If we were just human beings, living in a spaceship, with an algae farm to give us food, we would not be moved to learn nearly as many things as we are moved by living on a world, surrounded by all kinds of variety. And when I see that variety being first decimated, and then halved — and I imagine in another hundred years it may be down by 90% and there'll be only 10% of what we had when I was a child — that makes me very sad, and very despairing, because we need variety. We came from that, we were born from that, it's our world, the world in which we became what we have become.

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: I say the entities that are named as gods by Earthians are imagined into being by Earthians as personal helper-buddies, justifiers, threateners (my god can beat up your god). They don't "run on" anything any more than a mirror image "runs on" anything. They merely reflect what people want them to be. "I want to have more children than my brother does, thus proving I'm a better man than he is, so my god tells me I should have a big family." "I want to screw women, so my god is going to give me seventy virgins I can screw for all eternity." The "gods" in The Margarets who could really do anything were actually an old, highly evolved race of real people. The others were only reflections. The real God, who may really exist, is outside all that, perhaps watching closely, perhaps merely asleep for a few trillion years while the experiment runs out.
We — thee and me as individuals — will never know that God, though after a few trillion years, the universe as a whole may come to understand that God.

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: Each race creates its own devils. You had so many that they specialized. Devils of racial hatred, devils of greed and violence. Devils who killed their own people in orgies of blood. Devils who bombed clinics, devils who bombed school buses, devils who bombed other devils. I got to know every one of them by name. As soon as I arrived, I sent my monsters out to kill them all. They had tarnished my reputation, and though I have lavished much care on mankind, vengeance is mine.

Guardian Galenor in Ch 43 : various pursuits<!-- 418 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: People allow themselves to believe an event if it's called a miracle while disdaining the same event if it's called magic. Or vice versa. Life arises naturally; where life is, death is, joy is, pain is. Where joy and pain are, ecstasy and horror are, all part of the pattern. They occur as night and day occur on a whirling planet. They are not individually willed into being and shot at persons like arrows. 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…

The Visitor (2002)
Context: You will divide the sheep from the goats and you will encourage the one and shepherd the other. You always had a leaning that way. Each of you will find the fight that suites yourself and your being. You will triumph, suffer, weep, rejoice, possibly die... If you die another will rise up in your name, if you don't die, you'll live an extremely long life. You are my angels, for whom an almost heaven waits... Your work will be long, however, long and hard before you can rest in it.

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: The Inquisition, by defining and limiting knowledge, was evil. The Taliban, by defining truth and refusing girls an education, is evil. Any religion that says it knows the one and only truth is evil, because it limits knowledge. Any political body that says it owns the truth is evil. Same reason.
Any repressive regime that seeks to control exploration and experimentation is evil. Same reason. Any regime that defines truth as a set of beliefs and occurrences that cannot be questioned, that can neither be demonstrated nor proven is not only evil but ridiculous. This includes all mythologies, miracles, etc. because, if creation happened for a reason, if it was done by God, you'd better believe every part of it, including intelligence, was done for a reason ascertainable, eventually, by intelligence. We would not follow and adore a ruler who lied and tortured. Why would we worship a God who did either? God doesn't lie and he/she/it doesn't fool around!
Shutting down inquiry is evil. Causing pain purposefully for no reason is evil. Enjoying causing pain by shutting down inquiry is an absolute evil.

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 40 : at ogre's gap
Context: The world stopped. She was somewhere else, learning things she had no names for. She was being instructed. Nell was in abeyance. The mind she shared was full of those treasures she had always sought, the workings of the universe, the reasons and intentions of the galaxies. Time passed forever.

Seeing is important. Smelling is important. Hearing is important. Everything is important and you have to look at, study, get involved with everything, and you have to believe what you find out, and test, and finally prove! None of this nonsense about not believing in fossils because God was just playing around in order to confuse us. If you ignore the evidence of your (dare one say God-given) senses, if you define myth as reality, and if you claim divine revelation allows you to destroy any part of creation, you have committed absolute evil.
Do we have any way of knowing exactly what is intended for the universe to be or become? No, but given the age and complexity of the whole shebang, we can be fairly sure creation is important.
Strange Horizons interview (2008)

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: You will divide the sheep from the goats and you will encourage the one and shepherd the other. You always had a leaning that way. Each of you will find the fight that suites yourself and your being. You will triumph, suffer, weep, rejoice, possibly die... If you die another will rise up in your name, if you don't die, you'll live an extremely long life. You are my angels, for whom an almost heaven waits... Your work will be long, however, long and hard before you can rest in it.

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: Every villain or villainous activity I have ever written about is a person or an activity that has actually lived or taken place. I invent nothing. When I wrote in Raising the Stones about the slavery practiced by one race and their reasons for it, those reasons were taken verbatim from arguments written in defense of Negro slavery by southern slave owners. Watch bullies at school. See how they delight in causing pain. See how little is done to change them. Imagine them grown, elected, put into power. They do grow, they are elected, they are put into power.

Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
The Visitor (2002)

Strange Horizons interview (2008)
Context: 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.

The Visitor (2002)
Context: "This place is a godland, you may call me god. Small g, for I am not proud. We are a race evolving in this Creation to serve the Maker of it. We act as temporary deities during the childhood of individual peoples and planets. I was the midwife who brought forth this world, who stirred the primordial ooze, and noted the life that crawled up from the sea. Our race is not unlike yours, but I am very old, and you are still very young."
"We come and go. I came to teach your people language. I raised up oracles, whispered to soothsayers, wove bright visions for sorcerers, and spoke marvels to your alchemists. I came again to raise up prophets in the the Real One's name: Bruno, Galileo, Newton, Fermi..."
The doctor interrupted, "The Real One? Who?"
"The Being whom I worship. The Ultimate who stands apart from time. The Deity some men think they are addressing when they pray with words. The Real One doesn't even perceive words. If IT did, imagine what IT would have to listen to! The Real One sees only the pattern of what is, where it begins and where it comes to rest. The only prayer IT perceives is action. … Only actions enter the pattern the Real One sees. What is. What was done. IT perceives neither intentions nor remorse."

Ch. 44 : the visitor

Guardian Camwar, in Ch. 4 : the cooper<!-- p. 42 -->
The Visitor (2002)
Context: I am myself, though from moment to moment something else seems to be looking on. Whatever will be required of me, however, can best be done if I remember who I am.

The Visitor (2002)
Context: 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.

Ch. 37 : leaving bastion

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
Context: I will be a sham, but not a snob. I will let every man, woman, or child, no matter how greedy or wicked, claim to have a personal relationship with me. In other words, I will be as arbitrary, inconsistent, ignorant, pushy, and common as humans are, and what more have they ever wanted in a god?

The Visitor (2002)
Context: 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 : the visitor

Arnole, in Ch. 45 : not in conclusion
The Visitor (2002)
Context: 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.... Conversely, some men write and teach about 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."

Arnole, in Ch. 45 : not in conclusion
The Visitor (2002)
Context: 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.... Conversely, some men write and teach about 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."

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 16 (p. 173)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 16 (p. 171)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 388)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 14 (p. 269)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 14 (p. 149)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 120)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 8 (p. 75)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 9 (p. 153)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (pp. 44-45)

The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 15 (p. 165)

Wolf in Ch. 37 : leaving bastion (p. 353)
The Visitor (2002)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 7)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 12 (p. 250)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 34 (p. 302)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 115)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 11 (p. 235)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 20 (p. 449)

Guardian Camwar in Ch. 4 : the cooper (p. 42)
The Visitor (2002)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 10 (p. 173)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 6 (p. 103)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 358)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 15 (p. 338)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 52; spoken by one of the leaders of a secretive neo-fascist organization)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 194)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 41)

Source: The Visitor (2002), Ch. 1 : caigo faience, first lines (p. 1)

The Visitor in Ch. 44 : the visitor (p. 464)
The Visitor (2002)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (p. 120)

Source: The Gate to Women's Country (1988), Chapter 10 (p. 88)

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 5 (p. 96)

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 355)