When you know that something is dying inside you, you learn not to put much trust in the random vitalities of the fleeting moment.

My temperament is not inclined toward more self-promotion than is absolutely necessary for my professional well-being.

I hate no one, sir. It seems a waste of emotional energy.

When you know that something is dying inside you, you learn not to put much trust in the random vitalities of the fleeting moment.

To devote oneself to vigilance when the enemy is an imaginary one is idle, and to congratulate oneself for looking long and well for a foe that is not coming is foolish and sinful. My life has been a waste.

Stale is stale and borrowed is borrowed, no matter how original your models may have been.

It has been suggested that Tiptree is female, a theory that I find absurd, for there is to me something ineluctably masculine about Tiptree’s writing. I don’t think the novels of Jane Austen could have been written by a man nor the stories of Ernest Hemingway by a woman, and in the same way I believe the author of the James Tiptree stories is male.