Sheri S. Tepper · 315 pages
Rating: (10.1K votes)
“HECUBA: I had a knife in my skirt, Achilles. When Talthybius bent over me, I could have killed him. I wanted to. I had the knife just for that reason. Yet, at the last minute I thought, he's some mother's son just as Hector was, and aren't we women all sisters? If I killed him, I thought, wouldn't It be like killing family?Wouldn't it be making some other mother grieve? So I didn't kill him, but if I had, I might have saved Hector's child. Dead or damned, that's the choice we make. Either you men kill us and are honored for it, or we women kill you and are damned for it. Dead or damned. Women don't have to make choices like that in Hades. There is no love there, nothing to betray.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Gate to Women's Country
“Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Gate to Women's Country
“(ghost of)ACHILLES: How can I force obedience on this? In other times I've used the fear of death to make a woman bow herself to me. If not the fear of her own death, then fear for someone else, a husband or a child. How can I bend this woman to my will?
(ghost of)POLYXENA: I think I will not bend.
IPHIGENIA: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Gate to Women's Country
“Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain.”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Gate to Women's Country
“along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain. On either side the gutters ran with an infant chuckle and gurgle, baby streams being amused with themselves. The”
― Sheri S. Tepper, quote from The Gate to Women's Country
“She wore a cantilevered, augmented-breast-skimming satin dress the colour of egg-yolk. Somewhere in deepest Nebraska, a prom queen two sizes smaller than Selena was wondering where the fuck her outfit had disappeared to.”
― Tabitha McGowan, quote from The Tied Man
“You know,' Wraith muttered, 'life was a lot easier when we hated all humans and didn't give a shit what happened to the lot of them.' He laughed. 'Okay, I couldn't say that with a straight face. I still don't give a shit'.”
― Larissa Ione, quote from Ecstasy Unveiled
“When I get home I take some sleeping pills and within what seemed like half an hour of unconsciousness it was Monday morning again.”
― Irvine Welsh, quote from Filth
“I'd burn the salad, suh. Us of the fatal beauty type are pretty awful cooks if y' ask me. - Dorothea Duckfontein Dillworthy "Dotti”
― Brian Jacques, quote from Lord Brocktree
“The civil servant looks back at the file and says flatly, as if reading, “No children?” and then, looking directly up at Somer, “No babies?”
Her cheeks flush with familiar shame in this country where fertility is so celebrated, where every woman has a child on each hip. She shakes her head. After a couple more exchanges with Krishnan, the civil servant tells them to come back in the morning for an update on their case. K
rishnan takes her arm and leads her out of the building.
“What was that about?” she says once they are outside.
“Nothing,” he says. “Indian bureaucracy. Everything is like this here.”
He flags a taxi
“What do you mean ‘like this’? What happened back there? They kept us waiting an hour, that guy clearly hadn’t even read our file, and then he barely even talks to me!”
“That’s because you’re—”
“I’m what?” she snaps at him.
“Look, things work differently here. I know how to handle this, just trust me. You can’t come here with your American ideas—”
“I didn’t come here with anything.”
She slams the taxicab door and feels the whole car reverberate.”
― Shilpi Somaya Gowda, quote from Secret Daughter
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