Tanith Lee Quotes

Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.

— Tanith Lee

“It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.”

— Tanith Lee

“The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.”

— Tanith Lee

“Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.”

— Tanith Lee

It's lovely. I hate it.

— Tanith Lee

“We all have our dreams. May we find them, and God have mercy on us when we do.”

— Tanith Lee

“I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.”

— Tanith Lee

Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.

— Tanith Lee

“I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.”

— Tanith Lee

“He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.”

— Tanith Lee

“But to Ezail, gifted with acceptance, it was only another facet of the riotous marvel of the earth. For all was marvelous there, was and is still, but humanity becomes inured to repetitive amazements - that the sun may rise, that a tiny seed may become a tree or a man, that life, coming from nowhere, sets us to moving like clockwork, and going out again leaves us to sleep. Or else, as then, takes us away with it, who knows? But we are used to it all, dawn and growth, living and dying. It takes a dragon on houseroof to wake us up now - and then, too. But to Ezail, all was wonder and no single item more than another: Dawns and dragons were one.”

— Tanith Lee

“When I was younger and ran free in the forest, a hunter caught my mate and stunned him with a blow and locked him in a cage. I went to the place in the broad white of the spring moon; near to the hunter's fire I went, near enough to hear his man's breathing and see the flamelight catch on the knife in his hand. I gnawed through the bars of the cage and dragged at my mate, and half carried him as I would carry a cub, away into the trees. My paws were sore, I lost a tooth, my back pained me and I was afraid, but I never thought I could do otherwise. That is what love is.”

— Tanith Lee

“I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.”

— Tanith Lee

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

— Tanith Lee

“I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?”

— Tanith Lee

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

— Tanith Lee

Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.

— Tanith Lee

“I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.”

— Tanith Lee

“It was the forest's fault. Those two handsome woodcutters. An evil place, the forest, everyone knew it, full of temptations and imps ...”

— Tanith Lee

“I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.”

— Tanith Lee

She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death.

— Tanith Lee

The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?

— Tanith Lee

“Azhrarn the Beautiful," said Chuz lovingly, "it is your beautiful madness I have come to see.”

— Tanith Lee

“Azhrarn, Lord of Terrors, terrified.”

— Tanith Lee

The kind of teacher who never learned anything herself. Or taught anything, except sarcasm or fear.

— Tanith Lee

“He may harp in the Dark One's Hall and take no harm, who is a true harper.”

— Tanith Lee

“I will pay you in trouble and terror.”

— Tanith Lee

Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine

— Tanith Lee

“She braced herself for the pain of the perfect horn breaking her heart.”

— Tanith Lee

“Don't ever," he said, "be afraid of me."
But I was. He'd driven a silver nail through my heart.”

— Tanith Lee

“No man to lord, no child to hold.”

— Tanith Lee

Roilant caught himself, with exasperation, slipping into vacuous philosophy, a sure sign his opinion of life was at its very lowest.

— Tanith Lee

“It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains; the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.”

— Tanith Lee

“It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.”

— Tanith Lee

“You should visit before you pass judgement on a place.”

— Tanith Lee

Goddess," he said, "I would strongly advise you to continue this journey as you were-in your carriage." "Vazkor," I said, "I would strongly advise you not to advise me.

— Tanith Lee

“It was usual to be obedient to authority, to obey a legal letter. But Rachaela left her bills
unpaid until the threats began. She ignored the money-envelopes stuck through the door for starving
children and the sick.”

— Tanith Lee

“I felt angry and silly in that feather-itch dress. I felt alone. But one always is, I suppose.”

— Tanith Lee

“(Oscar) Wilde is surely one of the most erotic writers who ever lived.”

— Tanith Lee

When will they fight?" I asked. "Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man's work." I laughed. "I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men.

— Tanith Lee

I tend not to analyse my work, though I'm frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.

— Tanith Lee

“If I ever get to 100, I'd want to be filled with wonder and wild, adolescent, wide-eyed interest in newness. So let's keep the flame burning. Let's stop thinking everyone over 29, or 49, has to be reinforced by concrete.”

— Tanith Lee

“If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it
I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.”

— Tanith Lee

“When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!”

— Tanith Lee

“Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.”

— Tanith Lee

“It was so useful to lie with the truth.”

— Tanith Lee

Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor.

— Tanith Lee

“For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.”

— Tanith Lee

“I am interested in most mythology. Celtic or Christian no more than anything else. I will admit to a pleasure and sense of hope in what I see as the basic teachings of Christ, stripped of the nonsense that has sometimes been accumulated about them and the embarrassing misunderstanding.”

— Tanith Lee

“I simply write what I want, wish, long to write ... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.”

— Tanith Lee