James Tiptree Jr. Quotes

Absolutes are absolutely dangerous.

Being, I imagine, must be very simple. It is Becoming which is so messy and which I am all for.

Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him.

Passing in any crowd are secret people whose hidden response to beauty is the desire to tear it into bleeding meat.

All I can say is that laughter is my music; I would deeply suspect an argument which hadn't laughter.

Certainly my inner world will never be a peaceful place of bloom; it will have some peace, and occasional riots of bloom, but always a little fight going on too. There is no way I can be peacefully happy in this society and in this skin. I am committed to Uneasy Street. I like it; it is my idea that this street leads to the future, and that I am being true to a way of life which is not here yet, but is more real than what is here.

good is too often allied with vulnerability and evil with power.

Any chance beats no chance.

Evil is the voltage of good; the urge to goodness, without the potential of evil, is trivial.

I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation.

You can understand why a system would seek information - but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?

Anyone who shoots a real gun at you when drunk and angry is simply not husband material, regardless of his taste in literature.

The only way I can possibly heat my so-called mind up to working temperature is to imagine I'm talking to someone I admire.

I cannot teach -- if I teach as teaching should be I become so exhausted I nearly die, I seem to have no middle gear.

I am one of those that always get accidentally guillotined when the Great Day of Liberation comes, because ... I guess ... I am full of parentheses. Revolutions can't abide parentheses.

I dreamed horse and lived horse and expected, if necessary, to marry a horse; for all practical purposes I was a horse.

You know, exams are like war -- the birth rate of ideas goes up. Anything to keep from this dismal regimen, says poor mind, and hopefully tosses up another distraction.

Did you ever look into the personalities of male cooks, Army, logging camp, etc.? They're all supposed to be crazy, incomprehensible, contemptible. And angry. The act of feeding adult males seems to have strange personality effects.

And here is our girl, looking-- If possible, worse than before. (You thought this was Cinderella transistorized?)