People From New Mexico

"Disillusionment, pain, unpleasant surprise, all were part of growing up."

"“How did this happen?” she demanded from the world at large. “Software,” the hardware consultant opined. “Hardware,” the software support person snarled."

"What was scheduled had no connection with what actually happened."

"“Each day we investigate all premises within three blocks of the palace. Lookin’ for anarchists and revolutionaries, so they tell us, not that we’ve ever found any. Found a nest of revisionists once, but nobody cared.” “What were they revising?” she asked, truly curious. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask ’em.”"

"What kind of a universe would it be if we could not do small kindnesses for one another?"

"“Sometimes I despair, Ellat. Will I ever be able to surprise you?” “Yes. If you’d listen to me, ever, it would surprise me enormously.”"

"“Of course, the governor says the man is mistaken.” “Governor says he's a stupid ass,” muttered Haurvatat. “I think the man has a glitch in his software somewhere.”"

"Morgot and Myra would tell her there wasn’t any reason to make promises or seek changes because the Great Mother didn’t bargain. The deity didn’t change her mind for women’s convenience. Her way was immutable. As the temple servers said, “No sentimentality, no romance, no false hopes, no self-petting lies, merely that which is!” Which left very little room, Stavia thought, for womanly initiative."

"There is no fucking in Hades."

"We obey orders, and we don’t ask if the officer is crazy or not!"

"Myra subsided into outraged and sulky silence. Her romantic dream of motherhood had been riven into sharp-edged fragments by late-night feedings, constant diaper washing, and a baby who persisted in looking and acting like a baby, not like a young hero."

"Honor is only a label they use for what they want you to do, Chernon. They want you to stay, so they call staying honorable."

"The one sure part of every plan is that it will be set awry."

"The extent of my ignorance oppresses me."

"“We have a saying, we travelers: ‘For a man’s business, go to your troupe leader; for a woman’s business, go to Women’s Country. For a fool’s business, go to the warriors.’”"

"“Show yourselves,” cried Stephon. “Only cowards hide in the dark.” “Cowards do many things,” said the voice. “Cowards kill their Commanders and make it look like a bandit attack. Cowards plot in secret. Cowards breed insurrection. Cowards plan the abuse of women.”"

"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."

"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."

"All kids think some other family is perfect."

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

"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."

"All men believed they had their own magics in bed."

"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."

"“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.”"

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

"“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."

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

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

"Useless as a third leg on a goose."

"“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.”"

"Too good is good for nothing."

"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."

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

"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..."

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

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

"Duty was simply not enough. There had to be more than that!"

"He did a lot of disputation and he always raised his voice when his logic was weak."

"Her tone conveyed the unimportance of anything that might have happened, anywhere, before she came upon the scene."

"Sam grew up to be both dutiful and willful, a boy who would say yes to avoid trouble but then do as he pleased."

"“There’s a lot of fathering in those legends,” Sal commented, disapprovingly. “A lot of fathering, a lot of kinging, a lot of death and violence, and very little uncleing and ordinary kindly living.”"

"But Voorstod had long ago learned what passed for patience among the prophets: a rage they barely bothered to suppress. According to the prophets, if a man failed in his mission, he failed because Almighty God was unhappy with him and willed it so. If God were happy with him, he could not fail. If he failed, God was unhappy with him, and so were the prophets. It was all very logical."

"Let us consider, said Theology Panel: “Is Voorstod a slave state, or is it merely pious?”"

"Should the escaped Gharm be returned as breakers of contract and apostates, as Voorstod demanded? Or should the Gharm be given sanctuary as common sense and good nature dictated? Where did humanity stop and interference with religion begin?"

"Elsewhere negotiation might have worked. With other religions, it could have worked. Voorstod’s God, however, was a jealous and vindictive deity who ruled by murder, terrorism, and malediction. How did one negotiate with that?"

"Where other gods might have advocated making life a garden, Voorstod’s God promised the garden only after death, preferably violent death. Then might the faithful lie about on the greensward sucking grapes and fucking virgins, so the prophets promised."

"As with other peoples who had focused their lives upon wrongs in the past and heaven in the future, Voorstod made an everlasting hell of the present."

"For several days they cut, trimmed, and stacked the slender trunks, trying to pick ones that were straight and uniform in size, being careful not to clear-cut any area of the forest, a deed which Jep’s mom would have regarded as only slightly less dishonorable than genocide."

"It was her way to start each conversation with an apology, so she could be offended when the apology was accepted."

"“Early on, of course, it was assumed that there were lots of gods who caused various things, and one needed access to them to propitiate them or ask them to undo what some other god had done or, in rarer cases, to say thank you. Since there were lots of them, one always had a god to go to if some other one was acting up. Not a bad state of affairs, really, very much the system Phansure has today. Of course, it carried the seeds of its own destruction, because some of the priests that rose up around the man-gods got carried away with their own greed or need for power. “So, some of them became prophets, each of them claiming his particular god—or some new one he’d thought up – what is the biggest or the best or the only. Sometimes they said God was all-good or all-powerful or all-something-or-other or even, God knows, all-everything, which inevitably created dualism, because if God was all-everything, why did these contrary things keep happening? This required that man postulate some other force responsible for contrariness, either a sub-god or a bad angel or man himself, just being sinful, and that placed man squarely in the middle of this cosmic battlefield, always been told it was his fault when things went wrong. “And as long as man was in the middle, nothing could happen but a kind of tug-of-war. Man constantly prayed to God for peace, but peace never happened, so he decided that his god must really want war because the other side was sinful. Man invented and extolled virtues which could only be exemplified under conditions of war, like heroism and gallantry and honor, and he gave himself laurel wreaths or booty or medals for such things, thus rewarding himself for behaving well while sinning. He did it when he was a primitive, and he went on with it after he thought he was civilized.”"