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The Gate to Women's Country QUOTES

The Gate to Women's Country QUOTES

1 " Boys play with death as though it were a game, cutting their teeth on daggers. "

― Sheri S. Tepper , The Gate to Women's Country

2 " 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 , The Gate to Women's Country

3 " (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 , The Gate to Women's Country

4 " Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it. "

― Sheri S. Tepper , The Gate to Women's Country

5 " 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 , The Gate to Women's Country

6 " do whatever it was they expected her to do because they were always expecting her to do something more or be something more until it didn’t feel like there was enough of her left to go around. "

― Sheri S. Tepper , The Gate to Women's Country

7 " 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 , The Gate to Women's Country