Sheri S. Tepper

Blind faith in somebody stepping in to fix things eliminates a lot of emotional stress, so blind faith is what most people have!

There’s some who say magic came from nature, and with men destroying nature right and left, there’s not enough of it left.

Don’t take me for a fool, lovely girl. We fat old things have not laid aside our brains with our silhouettes.

Pain and loss. Hope dimmed. Ambition quenched. Love becoming an unfunny joke on the lovers! Body saying aye; mind saying nay; now saying can; future saying can’t.

Innocence. Gone, forever, with the unthinkable and the unspeakable. And innocent laughter gone as well. Now only the dirty giggle, the wicked snigger, the game of out-grossing, the playtime of the beasts.

So that when the real death stalks

When the real horror begins

It will all be familiar and we will be able to enjoy it.

“And when a man or a woman climbs, Beauty, he or she can end up as high as the angels or higher.”

“The saints,” I nodded, thinking I knew.

“Oh, saints,” Puck said. “Whsst. Saints! Martyrs and virgins and what all. Relics in churches, and both the relic and the churches dead as brass. No. I’ll tell you who climbs. Gardeners climb. And farmers. And painters. And poets. People who build beautiful things without destroying to do it.”

Then, suddenly, I got old. Up until a year or two ago, I wasn’t…didn’t feel old at all.

Fearful people develop their religions as protective devices, ways to manipulate hostile environments, formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies. The more fearful people are, the more enemies they have, the more adversarial language they use.

Also, the god often resembles his followers in behavior and feelings. Angry people have angry gods and vindictive people have vindictive gods, and so forth.

Those who encounter chains of events at two disparate points, without observing the connections, think they have observed coincidence when they have, in fact, seen only consequence.

Every hundred years they would be disillusioned, and each time they would swear to hide their disillusionment in order to retain their power. “We won’t tell anyone,” they’d say. “We won’t let anyone know. We’ll deny it. We’ll defend the traditional teachings!”

Such things that happened before! Men in power had made mistakes or foolish claims and spent the rest of their lives and their successors’ lives defending the indefensible, or hiding it.

Do not wish to live forever. Do not believe that every man-shaped thing is holier than something else. Do not look into the mirror to see the face of God.