Book bits

[Lilith7]

"We pagans rarely persecute Christians. We believe there are many gods so accept another man’s religion as his own affair, while Christians, who perversely insist that there is only one god, think it is their duty to kill, maim, enslave, or revile anyone who disagrees. They tell me this is for our own good."
Bernard Cornwell, The flame bearer.

“The way of life can be free & beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls – has barricaded the world with hate – has goose-stepped us into misery & bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard & unkind. We think too much & feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness & gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent & all will be lost.” Charlie Chaplin, The great dictator.

" The sexual, physical & emotional violence meted out to women on a daily basis shocks & angers me.(Oh wait a minute – women are not supposed to be angry!) People have sometimes commented that women are violent too. Yes, a few are, but there doesn’t seem to be the need for a chain of refuges the length & breadth of New Zealand for men to escape from dangerous women.
In her essay on rape culture, “The longest war” Rebecca Solnit (Men explain things to me & other essays, Granta 2014) asks when the hundreds of attacks on women all over the world will be recognized not as isolated incidents but as a pattern. “Violence doesn’t have a race, class, religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender.”

Carole Beu, passion play, Stroppy old women, compiled by Wendyl Nissen & Paul Little


“Those who govern want us to compete & become like the rest of the world & are selling our produce & manufacturing to those willing to work for a pittance, while those who are in command can demand rewards…… The gap between rich & poor has so widened survival for many has become their biggest concern. There is now child poverty in a country that we from Europe chose as the ideal place to raise a family."

Ans Westra, Blunderland, Stroppy old women Compiled by Wendyl Nissen & Paul Little

[Lilith7]

“Shorter hours for the working man, & a minimum wage for both skilled & unskilled labour, which will guarantee every man over the age of 21 a salary that will enable him to live decently. ‘Charlie Chaplin interview with New York World, 1931.
Charlie Chaplin, his life & art. David Robinson

“The point is that all the things we used to let society hold over us – my god, he got drunk in public; good lord, she actually has sex; wow, he’s experimented with drugs; gee whiz, sometimes she doesn’t look perfect; holy crap, he’s had a few minor run-ins with the law - none of that garbage matters, & Caitlin & most of her generations are saying so. They just don’t care about it; they don’t care about it now, & they won’t care about it when they’re the ones in power, either.”
Robert J Sawyer, Wonder


“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honour, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” Joseph Heller, Catch-22


“Evil is not just a theory of paradox, but an actual entity that exists only for itself. .....it must hide within the shroud of lies and deceit it spins to manipulate the weak-minded as well as those who choose to ally themselves with it for their own personal gain......
For evil must rely on the self-serving interests of the arrogant, the lustful, the power-hungry, the hateful, and the greedy to feed and proliferate...... once all that was good has been extinguished by corruption or annihilation, evil will then turn upon and consume what remains: particularly its immoral servants who have assisted its purpose so well … along with itself."
R.G. Risch, Beyond Mars: Crimson Fleet

'The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter & that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, Images powerful enough to deny our nothingness."
La condition humaine, (man’s fate) Andre Malraux.

[Lilith7]

“A blade of grass is a commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars. Our descendants on Mars will know the value of a patch of green. And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.” You know why trees smell the way they do?” Murphy asked, looking up from her hammering. “Sap?” Logan guessed. “Chlorophyll?” Murphy shook her head. “Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years’ worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That’s why trees smell so beautiful and old.”
Frances O Roarke

"There’s an old man looking backward, at the dreams he used to have, at the life he thought he’d lead, at the young man he once was; looking forward."
Radio freefall, Matthew Jarpe

“These money men are strange human beings. They proclaim vision & innovation, but seem unable to imagine what their fellow man might be feeling. Poverty & powerlessness are beyond their ken. If the ability to walk in your fellow man’s footsteps is a barometer of civilisation, then these people are barbarians.”
Greg McGee. Love & money.

[Lilith7]

"Responsible poverty is an endless cycle of no. No, you can’t have that. You can’t do that, can’t afford that, can’t eat that, can’t choose that. This is off-limits, & that is not for you, & this over here is meant for different kinds of people………."

"I think the reason for this is that people are less moralistic about the vices themselves than they are about the cost of the vices. The logic is that if you’ve got excess money & throw it away on booze & cigarettes, then that’s your business. But if you’re poor, then that’s a sin & a shame.
Because if you’re poor, rich people assume you’re on welfare, or you’re getting food stamps or some other social services. Once you take a penny from the government, a morality clause goes into effect, where you’re never allowed to have anything that you might actually enjoy. It’s the hair shirt of welfare.
I have trouble understanding why taking a few grand a year in food stamps is somehow magically different than taking trillions as a bailout.
America spent $76.4 billion on food stamps for 2013, compared with trillions, possibly hundreds of those, for the banks………….."

"What really riles me is the idea that poor people are somehow inherently more selfish when we have children. There are plenty of rich people who have kids for exactly the same reasons I just described – because they want someone who will love them unconditionally, & with whom they can share that kind of all encompassing love. But somehow, because they have money, rich people are entitled to feel that way without being derided……………."

"Are these irresponsible parents who deserve to have their kids taken away - or even to have the threat of that held over their heads? No. They’re just poor people who love their kids & who are doing the best they can for them with limited resources. So lets stop saying that poor people are irresponsible parents & start admitting that society doesn’t seem to believe that if you are poor you are entitled to be a parent at all…………"


"Because our lives seem so unstable, poor people are often seen as being basically incompetent at managing their lives. That is, it’s assumed that we’re not unstable because we’re poor, but rather that we’re poor because we’re unstable. So let’s talk about just how fucking impossible it is to keep your life from spiralling out of control when you have no financial cushion whatsoever…….."

"In the long term, it makes way more sense to buy a good toaster. But if the good toaster is $30 right now & the crappiest toaster of them all is ten, it doesn’t matter how many times I have to replace it. Ten bucks it is, because I don’t have any extra tens…….."

"For the love of god, please stop telling us that outrageous salaries are justified because some people are just worth that much. You guys can totally pretend that anyone can possibly earn thousands of dollars every minute. Just stop demanding that we pretend with you, that’s all. You guys are supergood at excluding us from conversations. Maybe make that one of them……"

"Sex. You really need to start using condoms or something. Your STD rates are pretty much the same as ours. Its hard to listen to you guys on
public health issues when you’re getting the clap as often as we are….."

"You cannot cut access to birth control & then act surprised when people get pregnant. I am fairly certain that few wealthy people walk around with that infamous cheap aspirin between their knees. Poor people are allowed to fuck sometimes too! And we do! Because we’re human! Just like you!"

Linda Tirado, Hand to mouth, the truth about being poor in a wealthy world.



"There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

Will Rogers

[Lilith7]

"No two persons ever read the same book."
Edmund Wilson

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

"No matter busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading or surrender yourself to self chosen ignorance."
Confucius

"A book can transport you to worlds you cannot imagine & help you deal with the real world that often defies imagination."
Leonard Nimoy

[Lilith7]

"There is always room for a story
that can transport people
to another
place ."
J K Rowling

"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales.
If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."
Albert Einstein.

"We did what we could. We wrote to newspapers. We marched & we protested. We voted. After that, why not be cheerful? If we stop being cheerful, we give in to them."
Beatrice & Virgil, Yann Martel

"The stock exchange is something very different. There is no economy & no production of goods & services. There are only fantasies in which people from one hour to the next decide that this or that company is worth so many billions, more or less. IT doesn’t have a thing to do with reality or with the Swedish economy.

“So you’re saying that it doesn’t matter if the Stock exchange drops like a rock?”
“No, it doesn’t matter at all”, Blomberg said.....
“It only means that a bunch of heavy speculators are now moving their shareholdings from Swedish companies to German ones. So it’s the financial gnomes that some tough reporter should perhaps identify & expose as traitors. They’re the ones who are systematically damaging the Swedish economy in order to satisfy the profit interests of their clients.”

The girl with the dragon tattoo, Stieg Larsson

"In fact, all his black & white thinking does is harden hearts, fix prejudice & blind good folk to the harm they do. And if something happens to challenge the way in which they see the world, when black & white thinking at last dissolves into a million shades of grey, men like Reynaud are left floundering, grasping at straws in a hurricane."

Peaches for Monsieur Le Cure, Joanne Harris.

[Lilith7]

"Here bread is still the staff of life, a well of sweet water is more than jewels, a tree is shade, a piece of fertile ground is earth that will grow food, & hands are still marvellous creative instruments that can take the raw, rough stuff of rock & soil & water & make from it warmth & comfort, & beauty too. Perhaps they are so impressive a people because their normal expression – I realize this as I look around the crowded schoolroom – is one of quiet dignity. And I realize too that although I have seen these faces show grief, anger, bewilderment, laughter, pride, passion & sometimes resignation, what gives the faces a nobility almost unnatural in our age is the complete absence of resentment & pettishness, or those tell-tale lines that mark the frustration of little egos."

Charmian Clift (Possibly from Peel me a Lotus)


"I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

George Carlin. On the American dream


"We human beings seem always to have found it comforting to have someone to look down on – a bottom level of fellow creatures who are very vulnerable, but who can somehow be blamed & punished for all or any troubles."

Parable of the talents, Octavia Butler



"The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely & perplexed as one. And from this first ‘we’ there grows a still more dangerous thing: ”I have a little food” plus “I have none”.
The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. Its wool. It was my mother’s blanket – take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning – from ‘I’ to ‘we."


‘If he’ll take twenty five, I’ll do it for twenty. ‘No, me. I’m hungry. I’ll work for fifteen. I’ll work for food.
And this was good, for wages went down & prices stayed up. The great owners were glad & they sent out more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down & prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we’ll have serfs again.

And now the great owners invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches & pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit & kept the price of canned goods up & took his profit.

And the companies, the banks worked at their own doom & they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, & starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full & the children of the poor grew up rachitic, & the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger & anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents & spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants & searched for work, for food. And the anger began to ferment."


The grapes of wrath, John Steinbeck.

[Lilith7]

"There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen."
John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday


"Now for many years we have suckled on fear & fear alone, & there is no good product of fear. Its children are cruelty & deceit & suspicion germinating in our darkness. And just as surely as we are poisoning the air with our test bombs, so are we poisoned in our souls by fear, faceless, stupid sarcomic terror."
John Steinbeck, Once there was a war.


“It has always seemed strange to me’ said Doc ‘The things we admire in men, kindness & generosity, openness, honesty, understanding & feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism, & self interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.’
John Steinbeck, Cannery row.

"Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, & aesthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than they did about the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned & a tyre-pump belonged to the last man who picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords & not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo-Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered."
John Steinbeck, Cannery row.

[Lilith7]

"Like most of the Country Landowners Association, she was a believer in small government, with a paramilitary wing to deal with ramblers & picnickers."
Land of my neighbours, Barry Pilton

"The difficult task of knowing another soul is not for young gentlemen whose consciousness is chiefly made up of their own wishes."
George Eliot. Middlemarch

"The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people - in their pride, greed & duty.'
Corrag, Susan Fletcher




"We cannot change the reality of the life offenders face, but we can begin to recognise the realities of the lives they have led, & promote changes that will provoke healing instead of rage.
As I understand it, under-floor heating has been installed in at least one of the new prisons – the one in Otago – the decision having been made that given the average winter in that area, under-floor heating was the cheapest & most efficient option. But where in the media debate about the idea of under-floor heating was the additional information that the temperature at which the heating was set is around 6 degrees – just enough to meet the UN standard & to stop ice forming on the floors?
The arena of female inmate management has the potential to assist the Department greatly in that regard – a small population within which the effects of changes made & risks taken can be assessed efficiently & effectively. In time this will show the way forward for the larger male inmate population.
It is easy when operating in the world of prisons & crime, & when faced daily with the potential that seems to exist for humans beings to hurt one another, to become focused on the negativity of the environment, the need to punish, to remind those who find their way to prison of their worthlessness. If the communities of NZ are to find a way out of the current situation of spiralling crime rates & increased societal violence, however, the Department must be prepared to help them review their perceptions of who are in our prisons & what they need to ensure they do not return a second time.

I have come to understand & be horrified by the degree to which, completely aside from the bad parenting chant that echoes across NZ every time another child dies a violent death at the hands of someone who is supposed to love & protect them, so much of the damage done in the lives of at-risk children is done by our bureaucracy & our systems – systems that purport to have the welfare of the child at heart.

Children need, on occasion, to be removed from their family for their ongoing safety & wellbeing, but it is what happens next that I take issue with – the ongoing harm done by the child protection system in the cases I have been involved in."
The power of mothers, Celia Lashlie

[Lilith7]

"Today they are teaching the subject of art as a frill in school, partly due to intellectual preciousness that has crept into art departments with the making of the History of Art.
Intellectualising places art on an unattainable pedestal only for the few, causing New Zealanders to revert to that invented snobbery that tends to ignore anything arty as exotic, unattainable, not wholesome.

Music has a better chance but music is mathematical, has formula, otherwise Beethoven couldn’t have made music after his deafness. You cannot have a blind artist. The universities should need formulas to pass exams in the subjects of the soul, comparing them. There is no comparison between sound & reason, or shape & colour & reason. The intelligence of each individual can only be judged by his works. His gray matter is trained a different way. Art ignores reason, works on emotional skills, & judgement should be totally visual. It is envy that gets in the way of correct assessment. Why should artists have to pass the same exams as anyone else."
Yvonne Rust, maverick spirit, Theresa Sjoquist


"If a woman was poor it was considered her fault. If her children went hungry, it was blamed on her flawed character.
Poverty was considered a crime, conveniently alleviating the conscience of the upper classes.

Poorhouses were designed to be as miserable as possible to discourage use by people who needed help most. Food rations, deemed an ‘efficient test of poverty’ were half the amount served in prisons, just enough to keep the worker inmates on their feet. The workhouse was a death sentence for 23% of those who entered, a mortality rate more than double that for the homeless.
Basic expenses required at least 5 shillings a week, exceeding her earnings in spite of working overtime. In neighbourhoods like Goosedubbs st, rent cost 1 shilling & sixpence, oatmeal & flour, one shilling & ten pence. Potatoes, 5 pence for a large sack; candles & fuel, one shilling & two pence.

In his Essay on the principle of population, published in 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus argued that in accordance with the laws of nature, famine & starvation would weed out the poor, thus alleviating the strain of population growth on modern civilisation. He recommended that the underprivileged be prevented from marrying & having children. A father of three, he felt exempt from this proclamation because of his wealth.

A controversial celebrity of his time, Malthus advocated against the Poor laws & any assistance that might help sustain the struggling.
This was the brand of popular thinking that permitted the abuses of power under the Transportation act, including shipping twenty five thousand girls & women to the other side of the world."
Deborah J Swiss, The tin ticket; the heroic journey of Australia’s convict women.

[Lilith7]

"A case of law is a chess game for those who make their living at it, & a great sorrow for those who get caught up in its web."
Sharyn McCrumb. The ballad of Tom Dooley


"Hatred is a form of faith, distilled by passion to remove all rationality."

"Those who do not see money as a tool, but as an objective, will soon find themselves as its tool."

"Deities are invented by fallible & finite beings in the hope & desire to create immortal perfection; unfortunately, such deities only reflect their creators & inspire their followers to similar imperfections.
Human religions are based upon the twin assumptions that physical corporeality is a weakness & that an intelligent noncorporeal deity would provide superior guidance. Both assumptions are wrong."
L E Modesitt, The Elysium commission

"It was like somebody had thrown a bucket of iced water over me, & I had woken up in shock, seeing things clearly for the first time. The truth was obvious to me now but I had never seen it before. Previously, every newspaper story, every piece of gossip or suggestion of priests being involved in anything sexual had hit a spot within me & bounced off. Now I could accept it & act.
But my old view bothered & embarrassed me. For some time, I looked inward at this gaping & ridiculously childish fault in my thinking’ this black hole in my adult logic & common sense. I thought long & hard about the defects that limited my seeing the possible reality of sex & priests."
Hell on the way to heaven, Chrissie Foster with Paul Kennedy



"From the discomfort of truth there is only one refuge & that is ignorance. I do not need to be comfortable & I will not take refuge. I demand to know."
Thirteen, Richard K Morgan.



"Don’t we all deal with life the way we do our military service? Doing what we can, while we wait either to be demobbed or do battle? Some will clean up the barrack-room, others will skive off, or spend their time playing cards, or trafficking, or plotting something. Officers command, soldiers obey, but no one’s fooled by this comedy behind closed doors: one day, you’ll have to go out & die, officers & soldiers alike, the morons along with the crafty ones who smuggle toilet paper or deal in cigarettes on the black market."

The elegance of the hedgehog, Muriel Barberry.

[Lilith7]

"A tiny percentage of the population owns the vast majority of the country’s wealth. That suits them, but at the same time it’s terrifying; they are so outnumbered & have so much to lose. The idea that we might act in concert is appalling, that we might work towards something grander & more permanent than the filling of our bellies – they will crush this; they are too terrified to do otherwise."
(About the Chartist movement, 19th century)
The Telling, Jo Baker


"No God can be bigger than the gate that lets people into the presence. If the only way to that god is through a narrow gate with picky little gatekeepers, then that god is no bigger than that gate nor wiser than the keepers."

"The assumption that all women are equipped with a strong, overriding maternal instinct; that all babies arouse this maternal instinct; & that any woman who does not respond maternally is a rotten person who must be guilty as sin – the Hail Mary assumption."
Gibbon’s decline & fall, Sheri Tepper


"A Negro tries to register to vote in Mississippi.
The white man taking his application gave him the standard literacy tests:
“What is the first line of the thirty-second paragraph of the Unite States Constitution?”

The applicant answered perfectly.
:Name the eleventh President of the United States & his entire cabinet.”

The applicant answered correctly.
Finally, unable to trip him up, the white man asked “Can you read & write?”
The applicant wrote his mane & was then handed a newspaper in Chinese to test his reading. He studied it carefully for a time.

“Well, can you read it?”
“I can read the headline, but I can’t make out the body text.”

Incredulous, the white man said:” You can read that headline?”
“Oh yes, I’ve got the meaning all right.”
“What’s it say?”
“It says this is one Negro in Mississippi who’s not going to get to vote this year.”
Black like me, John Howard Griffin.

[Lilith7]

"Human fertility worshippers. The kind of people who will happily kill other species to make room for more humans, advocates of the old ‘fill up the world & ruin it’ philosophy.
Raising the stones."
Sheri Tepper.

"As she spoke, I had a vision of myself trapped in the pigsty, wandering from room to room wearing huge incontinence pants underneath voluminous tracksuit trousers. My wife & child had fled. My only visitor was the incontinence nurse bringing me fresh supplies."
Adrian Mole, the prostrate years. Sue Townsend.


"My Mother didn’t try to stab my Father until I was six, but she must have shown signs of oddness before that."
Never have your dog stuffed & other things I’ve learned, Alan Alda.

"Violence is never the answer.

Violence is always for the violator & never for the victim.
It is my belief that no one of us has the right to say 'you must or I'll hurt you' to any other creature, animal or human."

Monty Roberts, Horse sense for people.

[Lilith7]

“Their prime motivation is money or jobs – for humans, of course – because money & jobs buy votes or power. If wiping out forests means jobs & room for more people, they will wipe out forests. If killing animals means jobs & more room for people, they will drive the animals to extinction. Animals & forests do not vote. These destroyers care only that more room & more jobs be made available to accommodate the ever increasing number of people they encourage to be born, because an ever increasing population fuels our economic system.”
The Countess said, “But can’t they see what is happening to the world? Don’t they worry about it?”
Dora snorted. “They worry only that they be allowed to live out their lives in power & comfort. They buy the kind of lives they are destroying for others. They live in gated communities or in mansions on stretches of untouched land or perhaps in twelve room apartments at the tops of very tall, exclusive buildings. As for the poor, as for the animals, as for the trees, let them die.”
The family tree, Sheri Tepper




"Bobbi was in her forties by then & no longer a hooker. She was married & living in Houston, finally making an honest living. She worked as a receptionist at Enron."

Michael Tolliver lives, Armistead Maupin.

"I did know what she meant. She meant there were good homosexuals & bad homosexuals, & she would never think of me as a bad one. My parents, I remembered, had once categorised black folks in much the same way. They didn’t disapprove of all Negroes. Just the uppity ones. The ones who insisted on special rights."
Michael Tolliver lives, Armistead Maupin.

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk. "
Stephen King

[Lilith7]

“It is confusing, yes. Mankind pretends to love nature but destroys it wherever he goes. We claim life is sacred, but we leave it no room in which to exist. Not long ago, when we said every human is unique & holy, our children were taught which types of unique & holy were the best & which they should hate.”
“Not long ago?”
“Before we met any outsiders, people not of Earth. Now we don’t learn to hate humans anymore.”
“Just outsiders eh?” She laughed, a truly amused sound. “You. How are you different from most?”
“I’m an arkist. We’re suspicious of following anyone. We like to figure things out for ourselves. When we look at ourselves in the mirror, we know that we aren’t the best or wisest creature in the galaxy; we also know we aren’t nothing. When we consider that we will die, we struggle to do something with the time we have. We don’t confuse heedless & selfish proliferation of our race with reverence for life. We know that other creatures are sometimes better than we are. We try to learn from them.”
The companions, Sheri Tepper.

"Some thawed proved difficult at first, but sooner or later Fan’s virus would catch up & set them right. There was no need for any Doctrine, not per se. Not when complaints were so few & helping hands so many. Not when everyone behaved as they should. ………….. There are things the patch didn’t do. It didn’t stop criminality. Not altogether. However, it put a huge dent in it. Why take advantage of people when you feel better looking out for them? Why resort to theft when society truly wants to meet all your needs?

It didn’t stop stupid decision making. Still no shortage of that. But it made the vast majority of those stupid mistakes well intentioned.
It didn’t stop magical thinking. It put no end to faith-based reasoning. Nor did it unify everyone under the same religion. Rather, it made everyone more tolerant of other’s beliefs. It didn’t create universal vegetarianism, but it encouraged it. Those who did hunt did so for food, not sport. Compassion with the prey made it so no one would take a life lightly.
It didn’t put an end to jealousy, deceit or hard feelings, but it pushed people to talk their problems out & be a little less cruel than they otherwise would.

One thing it did do, Fantasia had warned us about ahead of time. It contributed to a lot of consensual sex. Question: What do you get when sharing pleasure with someone gives even greater chemical highs & even greater feelings of trust? Answer: A Puritan’s nightmare. Along with Chimpanzees, Bonobos re our closet genetic relatives, but for years they were barred from zoos for fear that their constant sex play might offend delicate visitors. Fan joked that she’d unleashed everyone’s inner Bonobo.
Better to be fucking than fucking each other over.

Everfree, Nick Sagan



"The screed that followed bemoaned the decline & fall of the white man, a slow but sure reduction of power over several centuries. The worrisome feeling one has of slipping down the food chain, with those unlike you increasingly vilifying you as a racist, sexist, imperialist, no matter what your personal beliefs might be. Wincing as multiculturalism overtakes your society, celebrating every heritage but your own. Stinging from memories of what once was, especially in the face of China casting a wider-than-ever shadow of influence, & both America & Europe weakened by the Clash of Civilisations, unsure what to do."
Everfree, Nick Sagan.


"Did anyone ever tell Toscanini or Bach that he had to choose between music & family, between art & a normal life?
Elizabeth Mann Borgese 1963"


"Witness the records of the courts with the wife beaters & slayers, the rapists, the seducers, the husbands who have deserted their families, the schemers who have defrauded widows & orphans - witness all these, & then say if men are the natural protectors of women."
Susan B Anthony 1902


"Whatever the motivation, male sexuality & violence in our culture seem to be inseparable. James Bond alternately whips out his revolver & his cock, & though there is no known connection between the skills of gun-fighting & love-making, pacifism seems suspiciously effeminate."
Susan Griffin 1971
Feminist quotes, various.

[Lilith7]

"We ask ourselves in some bewilderment, if women commit deeds of violence only when their monthly period induces an emotional instability, when do men commit their six times as many deeds of violence?"

Alice Beal Parsons 1926

"If ever you want a really good laugh, I would recommend reading up some of the incredibly involved & convoluted arguments of a male evolutionist trying to explain why woman, alone of all the primates, equipped herself with a hymen, which appears on the face of it to have no other purpose than to keep him out. "
Elaine Morgan. 1972

"We are told that men protect us, that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection.
Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, & they took all your property & your children, & paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit on streetcars & picked up your pocket handkerchief? "
Mary B Clay 1884

Feminist quotes, various.


"Being a mother is a noble status, right? Right. So why does it change when you put 'unwed' or 'welfare' in front of it?"
Florence Kennedy

"This whole society is like slow dancing - the men get to lead & the women get stepped on."
Lily Tomlin


"It seems that in order to be the kind of woman who's strong enough to live with a man, you tend to become the kind of woman no man wants to live with."
Lotus Weinstock

"I have five sons & therefore have to go out a lot."
Joan Kerr
Pulling our own strings, Gloria Kauffman & Mary-Kay Blakely.

[Lilith7]

"The same week our fowls were stolen, Daphne Moran had her throat cut..."
The scarecrow, Ronald Hugh Morrieson.

"You've made it all up, these traditions, these rules, but they're not real. Your loyalty's children. Its what we were put here for, to look after life. These things you play about at, they don't matter. Wars & rituals....all the time you're wasting children."
"There would be no romance in going back to her children & taking up the burden again, there was no material for legend in keeping children clean & fed. Even when she'd been telling him how important children were, she hadn't really felt it, the words had come down through some chain of command that was older & stronger than she was."
The pirate queen, Diana Norman


"Women constitute HALF the world’s population, perform nearly TWO THIRDS of the world’s work, receive ONE TENTH of the world’s income, own less than ONE HUNDREDTH of the world’s wealth."
From: Reflecting Men At Twice Their Natural Size.
Sally Cline & Dale Spender

"A person with innate talents will bring them into use, somehow or other, sooner or later – nothing on earth will stop him but death itself – for he is the talent & the talent is him, inseparable."
George Mackay Brown

[Lilith7]

'At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.'
Aldous Huxley

'But let our going be brave & joyous! Let us end with a prayer for all souls. Among these are the souls of those who have persecuted us; who have murdered God’s creatures, & extinguished His species; those who have tortured in the name of Law; who have worshipped nothing but riches; and who, to gain wealth & worldly power, have inflicted pain & death.

Let us forgive the killers of the Elephant, & the exterminators of the Tiger; & those who slaughtered the Bear for its gall bladder & the Shark for its cartilage, & the Rhinoceros for its horn. May we forgive them freely, as we may hope to be forgiven by God, who holds our frail Cosmos in His hand, & keeps it safe through his endless love.
This forgiveness is the hardest task we shall ever be called upon to perform. Give us the strength for it.'
The year of the flood, Margaret Atwood.


“You say there’s no hell. But what about someone like Hitler? Six million victims. Where’s the divine justice? If you inflict suffering on others & can’t be punished in this world, it’s surely waiting for you in the next.”
“No. There are no exceptions. It is not possible to do anything so terrible that it leads to external judgement & punishment in the afterlife. And yet you can expect perfect, divine justice.”
“A contradiction.”
“No contradiction, only a perfect balancing of the scales. You will go through a life review, in which the reviewer is your own greater being. It’s like taking part in a documentary with prodigious production values. You will experience your life from the point of view of everyone who was involved: everyone’s feelings, attitudes, motives & beliefs laid bare, including yours. You won’t just observe through their eyes & ears, you will experience what they experienced. Did you steal from someone? You will experience his hurt & outrage. Did you give food to someone who was hungry? Then you will experience her relief & joy. Of course, your Earth personality could not cope with this review, because the emotional typhoon would sink the ship of your mind.”……

“Then we literally experience….”
“Yes, say it.”
“We literally experience being…..one being.”
“You have it. That is the ultimate meaning of empathy. Divine justice for all. What need is there for punishment?”……
“After many incarnations you will know that even your soul is not a separate entity. You’ll see that all souls, combined, are like a great rock, which has a trillion moving atoms, yet is still & silent. Here, finally, is where you know yourself as the Field, the Source, the One.”

Michael Brown, Finding the field.


'I pray to God to protect me from his followers.
A person must feel passion for something, if not someone, in order to live. A goal. A cause. Conveniently 'serving God' & 'serving country' carry universal honour. Even more,’ defending God' & 'defending country.' Tap into those & voila, you transform into a Pied Piper. Play those magical tunes on your flute, & watch how the hypnotised masses follow you anywhere you lead. '
Monica Pradham, The hindi-bindi club

[Lilith7]

"You have comfy baby-stories you tell yourselves to explain why you're not good people. What sin you committed or how you didn't do what this or that god told you.
Instead of learning how not to be bad, you learn how to be forgiven & carried off to heaven. Most of you find it easier to believe in the baby-stories than to learn from history & science, because it takes brains & hard study to understand history & science, but the stories are easy & comfy.
People who want things easy & comfy resent people who study things. They teach their children the comfy stories & tell them not to worry about studying, just buy a ticket to go to heaven & gradually, everyone becomes as ignorant as everyone else."
Sheri Tepper, The Margarets.


"Every gun that is made, every warship that is launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger & are not fed, those who are cold & are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of it's labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not the way of life in any true sense. Under the clouds of war it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight Eisenhower.


"To live without identity, except as a human being. Because life, the birth & death essence of life, is flow, not security. It cuts all ground from beneath our feet, it picks us up & carries us where it will until at last it dumps us down into death. And only in living beyond the tribe, identifying beyond the nation-state - & its ruthless, proud identity - is there room for the heart, where lies freedom. "
The bird woman, Kerry Hardie


"It is a chronic & progressive disease. It is classified as such by the American medical association & the World health organisation. It can be arrested, placed in remission, but is incurable.
As with most diseases, the belief is that the cause is genetic. Addicts/alcoholics are born with a gene or gene structure, precisely which is not yet known, that when activated, causes the disease to present itself in an individual.
Once this happens, & at this point there is no way to know if or when it will happen, the addict is at the mercy of the disease. It cannot be controlled, it cannot be held in check by force of will, the decision to use or not to use, is not a decision that can be made because the disease makes the decision for you. The inability to control & the lack of choice is but a symptom of the disease."
A million little pieces, James Frey

"Now, I've always felt a holy terror for tanks & bombs, & I've never seen anything in them but the most complete expression of the worst traits of humankind.
I hate wars & revolutions - these dramas of redemptive violence that turn upon themselves like endlessly long screws & haul entire generations through the same murderous absurdities, apparently without ERROR signals going off in anybody's head."
The attack, Yasmina Khadra

[Lilith7]

"We have been thwarted at every turn by God. Not the real God. A false one which has been set up by man to expedite his destruction of the earth. He is the gobblegod who bids fair to swallow everything in the name of a totally selfish humanity. His ten commandments are me first (let me live as I please) , humans first (let all other living things die for my benefit) , sperm first ( no birth control), birth first (no abortions), males first (no women’s rights), my culture/tribe/language/ religion first, (separatism/terrorism), my race first (no human rights), my politics first (lousy liberals/rotten reactionaries), my country first (wave the flag, the flag, the flag, the flag), and, above all, profit first.
We worship the gobblegod. We burn forests in his name. We kill whales & dolphins in his name. We pave prairies in his name. We have retarded babies in his name. We sell drugs in his name.
We set bombs in his name. We worship him everywhere. We call him by different titles & commit blasphemies in the name of worship."
Sheri S Tepper


Terry Pratchett's Men at arms :
"The Librarian considered matters for a while. So...a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and
respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian's opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be."


"Its like any orthodoxy, let it run for a few centuries & what started as something that came from deep inside the human spirit turns into a set of holy texts that stultify thinking. Then people who yearn after the real experience as you do get palmed off with a set of rigid theological propositions - & all that's left to do is read it."
Marion Molteno, If you can walk, you can dance.


"My heart holds within it every form
It contains a pasture for gazelles
A monastery for Christian monks
There is a temple for idol worshippers
A holy shrine for pilgrims
There is a a table for the Torah
And the book of the Koran
I follow the religion of love
And go whichever way his camel leads me
This is the true faith
This is the true religion "
Ibn Arabi (Sufi mystic, d 1240)
From A blonde in the bazaar, Jill Worrall