James Tiptree Jr. Quotes & Sayings

Well, then. Whatever trauma you went through, these things don't last forever. You can't hate all men."

The smile is back. "Oh, there wasn't any trauma, Don, and I don't hate men. That would be as silly as - as hating the weather." She glances wryly at the blowing rain.

- 'The Women Men Don't See — James Tiptree Jr.

With your hand controlling all the input and your eye reading all the response you can make them a god . . . and somebody'll do the same for you. — James Tiptree Jr.

Man is an animal whose dreams come true and kill him. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

A voice spoke in his head, mellow and vast:

"Long have we watched you, little one."

"Who's there?" he quavered. "Who are you?"

"Your concepts are inadequate."

"Malfunction! Malfunction!" squalled the scouter.

"Shut up, it's not a malfunction. Who's talking to me?"

"You may call us: Rulers of the Galaxy."

The scouter was lunging wildly, buffeting him as it tried to escape the white grasp. Strange crunches, firings of unknown weapons. Still the white stasis held.

"What do you want?" he cried.

"Want?" said the voice dreamily. "We are wise beyond knowing. Powerful beyond your dreams. Perhaps you can get us some fresh fruit."

- 'Painwise — James Tiptree Jr.

For dreams that never die. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

Before he could lose courage he flung himself back and slammed his sleep-inducer to full theta. — James Tiptree Jr.

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) — James Tiptree Jr.

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

Any chance beats no chance. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

[Depression is] like combating the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with a handful of popcorn. But that handful of popcorn keeps you going. There is no sense in going on, there is no sense in any of those things, but thank God one does not live by reason alone. — James Tiptree Jr.

Absolutes are absolutely dangerous ... — James Tiptree Jr.

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

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

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

Good is too often allied with vulnerability and evil with power. — James Tiptree Jr.

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

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

Nothing but the effects of dust and vapor in the thin skin of air whereupon she crawls wingless. — James Tiptree Jr.

If I could describe "human being" I would be more than I am - and would probably be living in the future, because I think of human beings as something to be realized ahead....But clearly "human beings" have something to do with the luminous image you see in a bright child's eyes - the exploring, wondering eagerly grasping, undestructive quest for life. I see that undescribed spirit as central to us all. — James Tiptree Jr.

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

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 — James Tiptree Jr.

Are you . . . a policeman?"
"No. They'll be along shortly, I expect. Public suicide's a felony."
". . . I'm sorry. — James Tiptree Jr.

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

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference. — James Tiptree Jr.

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. — James Tiptree Jr.

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? — James Tiptree Jr.

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

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 — James Tiptree Jr.

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

He was wise in the ways of pain. He had to be, for he felt none.

When the Xenons put electrodes to his testicles, he was vastly entertained by the pretty lights.

When the Ylls fed firewasps into his nostrils and other body orifices the resultant rainbows pleased him. And when later they regressed to simple disjointments and eviscerations, he noted with interest the deepening orchid hues that stood for irreversible harm.

"This time?" he asked the boditech when his scouter had torn him from the Ylls.

"No," said the boditech.

"When?"

There was no answer.

"You're a girl in there, aren't you? A human girl?"

"Well, yes and no," said the boditech. "Sleep now."

He had no choice.

- 'Painwise — James Tiptree Jr.

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 — James Tiptree Jr.

Briefly he has lived in a dream more real than all his miserable life. — James Tiptree Jr.

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