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Boys play with death as though it were a game, cutting their teeth on daggers.Sheri S. Tepper
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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
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(ghost of) A C H I L L E S: 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) P O L Y X E N A: I think I will not bend. I P H I G E N I A: You see, it's as we've tried to tell you, Great Achilles. Women are no good to you dead.Sheri S. Tepper