Sheri S. Tepper
(1929–2016) American fiction writer
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.
