Quotes from book
Grass

Grass
Sheri S. Tepper

Grass is a 1989 science fiction novel by Sheri S. Tepper, and the first part of her Marjorie Westriding series, known as the Arbai trilogy. Styled as an ecological mystery, it presents one of Tepper's earliest and perhaps most radical statements on themes that would come to dominate her fiction, in which despoliation of the planet is explicitly linked to gender and social inequalities.

“Time past was nothing, no matter how long. Time ahead was everything, no matter how brief.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“If God is truly powerful, He would not let this plague go on.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 11 (p. 208)

“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.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“The first thing you’ve got to do is tell yourself that the shitheads are wrong…Not just a little bit wrong, but irremediably, absolutely, and endemically wrong. Nothing you can say or do will stop their being wrong. They’re damned to eternal wrongness, and that’s God’s will.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“She was trying to feel philosophical about dying, not managing it, trying not to be frightened, and not managing that, either.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“All men believed they had their own magics in bed.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“To Sylvan truth was truth and all else was black heresy, though on occasion he had the very human difficulty of deciding which was which.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“History upon Terra tells us what horrors follow upon religious mandates of unlimited reproduction.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“They see things; they overhear things; they tell us. We put two and two together to make forty-four, when we must.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

““Not hunting today, sir?” asked Tony in his most innocent voice, busy putting two and two together but not sure how he felt about the resultant sum.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“All kids think some other family is perfect.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“I’m trying to decide whether we can afford to be merciful. The Arbai were merciful, but when confronted with evil, mercy becomes an evil.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“Don’t waste your time on penitence or guilt. Solving the problem is better!”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“Eugenie thought of this often. Men had told her many sweet things about herself, but never before that she was important. It was the nicest compliment she had ever received.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“Too good is good for nothing.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

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

“Marjorie thought: It always comes down to something like this, doesn’t it. No matter what our consciences say, no matter how much doctrine we’ve been taught, no matter how many ethical considerations we’ve chewed and swallowed and tried to digest, it always comes down to us arming ourselves with weapons as deadly as we can manage and going out into combat…”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 17 (p. 377)

“They haven’t learned that being penitent sometimes does no good at all.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 374)

“They’ve got a kind of committee there,” he had said, “an office. Acceptable Doctrine, it’s called. Everyone on the committee is mostly concerned about what people believe. They’re running things, too; don’t let them tell you they aren’t. Truth doesn’t enter in. If they’ve decided something is doctrine, they’ll ignore all evidence to the contrary and lie to your face. You don’t want to run afoul of those types, do you? Not if you have questions to ask. No.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 10 (p. 191)

“Useless as a third leg on a goose.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 345)

““I don’t have much confidence,” she said. “A lot of what I’ve been taught isn’t making sense.”
“That’s the nature of teaching. Something happens, and intelligence first apprehends it, then makes up a rule about it, then tries to pass the rule along. Very small beings invariably operate in that way. However, by the time the information is passed on, new things are happening that the old rule doesn’t fit. Eventually intelligence learns to stop making rules and understand the flow.””

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 354)

Similar authors

Sheri S. Tepper photo
Sheri S. Tepper150
American fiction writer 1929–2016
David Foster Wallace photo
David Foster Wallace185
American fiction writer and essayist None
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Robert A. Heinlein557
American science fiction author None
Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury401
American writer None
Frank Herbert photo
Frank Herbert158
American writer None
Isaac Asimov photo
Isaac Asimov303
American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston Uni… None
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Arthur C. Clarke207
British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… None
William Faulkner photo
William Faulkner214
American writer None
Richard Bach photo
Richard Bach154
American spiritual writer None
Elias Canetti photo
Elias Canetti43
Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist,… None