James Tiptree Jr. Quotes

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

What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chinks of your world-machine.

Bethesda … Would I be wrong in guessing you work for Uncle Sam?"

"Why, yes. You must be very familiar with Washington, Mr. Fenton. Does your work bring you there often?"

Anywhere but on our sandbar the little ploy would have worked. My hunter's gene twitches.

"Which agency are you with?"

She gives up gracefully. "Oh, just GSA records. I'm a librarian."

Of course. I know her now, all the Mrs. Parsonses in records divisions, accounting sections, research branches, personnel and administration offices. Tell Mrs. Parsons we need a recap on the external service contracts for fiscal '73.

- 'The Women Men Don't See

Ahead lies only the irreversible long decline. For the first time we know there is nothing beyond ourselves.

I see her first while the Mexicana 727 is barreling down to Cozumel Island. I come out of the can and lurch into her seat, saying "Sorry," at a double female blur. The near blur nods quietly. The younger one in the window seat goes on looking out. I continue down the aisle, registering nothing. Zero. I never would have looked at them or thought of them again.

- 'The Women Men Don't See' (opening)

I love the alien in people, god I love the wildness, the wit, the lightning of the Other mind. A kind of sex-in-the-head, you know it's a rather Victorian affliction. Something to do with communication. I have had moments of communication with people, often totally unsuitable people, which had a truly unholy intensity... A sort of orgasmic meaningfulness and clarity, you know, all the old romantic stuff - two strangers stop and suddenly exchange glimpses of reality before moving on into the mists.

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

For dreams that never die.

Well, what brand of water do you drink?"
"Just what was in the faucet, sir," says Delphi humbly. "I--I did try to boil it--"
"Good God.

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

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

Briefly he has lived in a dream more real than all his miserable life.

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 have a cold mind and a warm heart, whereas most people have cold, troubled hearts and warm, muggy minds, which they mistake for sincere feelings.

THE ALMOST-INCORPOREAL VASTNESS PUZZLES, LISTENING AS LEVIATHAN MIGHT PUZZLE OVER THE PROBLEMS OF AN ATOM.

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.

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

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

I think they're gentle," she mutters.

"For Christ's sake, Ruth, they're aliens!"

"I'm used to it," she says absently.

- 'The Women Men Don't See

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.

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.

The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on.

She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.

- 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain

In the confusions of the next hours the Earth's population was substantially reduced, the biosphere was altered, and the Earth itself was marked with numbers of more conventional craters. For some years thereafter the survivors were existentially preoccupied and the peculiar dustbowl at Bonneville was left to weather by itself in the changing climatic cycles.

"The Man Who Walked Home

A woman writing of the joy and terror of furious combat, or of the lust of torture and killing, or of the violent forms of evil--isn't taken quite seriously. Because women aren't as capable of violent physical assault--not to speak of rape--as men are[...] So when one who writes about serious, violent evil turns out to be female, some readers may feel cheated--particularly if an action scene has stirred them. Now it all seems flat, even false--'What the hell does she know about real fighting?

- so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off.

"Hurrah for women's lib, eh?"

"The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed."

The apocalyptic word jars my attention.

"What do you mean, doomed?"

She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …"

"Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?"

Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different.

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons.

"Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch."

No answering smile.

"That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a - a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chink

To grow up as a "girl" is to be nearly fatally spoiled, deformed, confused, and terrified; to be responded to with falsities, to be reacted to as nothing or as a thing - and nearly to become that thing.

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

it wasn't an angel.
I think I saw a real estate agent.