Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotes

But whatever it is that they believe, the views they hold are altering this world; not only in the spirit, but on the material plane. As they deny the world of the spirit, and the realms of Avalon, so those realms cease to exist for them. They still exist, of course; but not in the same world with the world of the followers of Christ.

If you seek to avoid your fate or to delay suffering, it only condemns you to suffer it redoubled in another life.

Men destroy only what they fear.

The visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the Philosopher sought to transcend.

By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age with a changing world.
But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science fiction are willing to wait to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won't live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.

I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here.

Uther: "I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you"
"If your priests are right," said Viviane calmly, "I am already thoroughly damned and you may save your breath.

What sorrow is like to the sorrow of one who is alone?
Once I dwelt in the company of the king I loved well,
And my arm was heavy with the weight of the rings he gave,
And my heart weighed down with the gold of his love.
The face the king is like the sun to those who surrounded,.
But now my heart is empty
And I wander along throughout the world.
The groves take on their blossoms,
The trees and meadows grow fair
But the cuckoo, saddest of singers,
Cries forth the only sorrow of the exile,
And now my heart hoes wandering,
In search of what I shall never see more;
All faces are alike to me if I cannot see the face of my king,
And all countries are alike to me
When I cannot see the fair fields and meadows of my home.
So I shall arise and follow my heart in its wandering
For what is the fair meadow of home to me
When I cannot see the face of my king
And the weight on my arm is but a band of gold
When the heart is empty of the weight of love.
And so I shall go roaming
Over the fishers' road
And the road of the great whale
And beyond the country of the wave
With none to bear me company
But the memory of those I loved
And the songs I sang out of a full heart,
And the cuckoo's cry in memory.

Science fiction encourages us to explore ... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

He said, and his voice was strained as if he had had a mortal wound, 'Gwenhwyfar-' He so seldom spoke her formal name, it was always my lady or my queen, or when he spoke to her in play it was always Gwen. When he spoke it now, it seemed to her she had never heard a sweeter sound. 'Gwenhwyfar. Why do you weep?'
Now she must lie, and lie well, because, she could not in honor tell him the truth. She said, 'Because-' and stopped, and then, in a choking voice, she said, 'because I do not know how I shall live if you go away.

That faith seems too simple to me-the idea that we have only to
believe that Christ died for our sins once and for all. But I know too much of the truth ... of the way life works, with life after life in which we ourselves, and only we, can work out the causes we have set in motion and make amends for the harm we have done. It stands not in the realm of reason that one man, however holy and blessed, could atone for all the sins of all men, done in all lifetimes. What else could explain why some men have all things, and others so little? No, that is a cruel trick of the priests, I think, to coax men into thinking that they have the ear of God and can forgive sins in his name-ah, I wish it were true indeed.

I suppose all societies adapt their morals to their needs.

And it seemed to her that time stopped, that her body melted into his as if she were without nerve or bone or will, and his kiss was like fire and ice on her lips.

Was she mad, with her fancies of shared destiny and the other half of her soul?

they've put a price on my head because, like all governments who buy brains, they like to limit what the brains are used for.

ghosts. He had learned a little of the history of Halyn House

I do tend to lose track since the kids are out of school.

No house is big enough for the rule of two women.

The man who feels fear without cause is a fool; but the man is twice a fool who does not feel fear when there is cause.

What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do with as you will.

You speak of being afraid. Yet fear is something you generate in yourself, from your mind's lack of control; and you will learn to look at it and discover for yourself when you choose to be afraid. The first thing you must do is acknowledge that the fear is yours, and you can bid it come and go at will. Begin with this; whenever you feel fear that prevents choice say to yourself: 'What has made me feel fear? Why have I chosen to feel this fear preventing my choice, instead of feeling the freedom to choose?' Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you ... [Y]ou have chosen to do nothing, so that none of the things you fear will come upon you; so your choices are not made by you but by your fear ... I cannot promise to free you of your fear, only that a time will come when you are the master, and fear will not paralyze you.

Funny thing, how people keep fighting about religion, when really it's all the same. Seems to me it's the priests who make all the problems; most folks just want good harvests and healthy babies, just trying to get along. If it's not the cattle stampeding, it's the priests haranguing the crowds.

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

Men are by nature wanderers ... Every people has moved from somewhere, and had to learn the ways of the land from the people who were there before.

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?

My husband and I were very in love, and I had no reason to suspect that his interests lay anywhere else.

The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready. - Kevin

Without a dream to light your way, the word is a very dark place.

They have known one another since they were young, and if they cannot forget that once they loved in a way that comes not twice to any man

There's no "magic secret"; writing is like everything else; ten percent inspiration or talent, and ninety percent hard work. Persistence; keeping at it till you get there. As Agnes de Mille said, it means working every day - bored, tired, weary, or with a fever of a hundred and two.

A life path may have strange twists and turnings, and we do not always end up where we intend to go ...

Speak not against anyone whose burden you have not weighed yourself.

They have not forgotten the Mysteries," she said, "they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods." Lancelet smiled bitterly. "Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work through lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God's justice, but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.

If, she thought, you can call a man your lover when you have never exchanged a single kiss.

Think not that you can direct my steps! If you come with me - you follow!

His head was heavy on my breast, heavy as the child in my own childish arms, heavy as the King Stag who had come to me in triumph. Morgaine, my mother had called impatiently, take care of the baby... and all my life I had borne him with me.

But a voice said within her, Now it is too late.
They found her at high noon, just as the sun came out after the storm, floating among the reeds of the Lake. Her long hair was spread out on the surface like water reeds, and Morgaine, stunned with grief, could not find it in her heart to regret that Kevin had not gone alone into the shadowed land beyond death.

Lancelet's skin was so soft - she had thought all men were like Arthur, sunburnt and hairy, but his body was smooth as a child's.

...it was an old saying: three could keep a secret if but two of them lay in their graves...

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. 'You are wise', he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. 'I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you!

But if men do not believe in more than one life, how will they avoid despair? What just God would create some men wretched, and others happy and prosperous, if one life was all they could have?

Sin is in the wish to do no harm.

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it ...

it is the belief of mankind which shapes the world, and all of reality.

The Gods give of their best, not their worst, to men!

But I mind," Bart said savagely. "I'd like to see a world where I could have my picture taken, say, with Tommy on my lap if I want to. For every woman who got upset because I wasn't, shall we say, available for her romantic daydreams, there's be some young kid reading the papers and going to movies, and he'd be able to stop hating himself and say, 'Okay Bart Reeder is queer, and he's happy and successful, and he's getting along okay, so maybe I don't have to go out and hang myself after all.' And the suicide rate would go down, and everybody would be happy

God is one and there is but one God - all else is but the way the ignorant seek to put Gods into a form they can understand ...

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex.

If you truly believe that, my lady and queen, then for you it is truth: all the Gods are One God and all the Goddesses one Goddess. But would you presume to declare one truth for all of mankind throughout the world?

I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.'
The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

Even in her mind the words had the forlorn gallantry of someone whistling in the dark.

Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

For lo, all the days of man are as a leaf that is fallen and as the grass that withereth. Thou too shalt be forgotten, like the flowers that falleth on the grass, like the wine that is poured out and soaks into the earth.

It is hardly lonely in a nunnery, son, with other women. And God is there."
Morgause said, "I would rather dwell in a hermitage in the forest than in a house full of chattering ladies! If God is there, it must be hard for him to get a word in edgewise!

Never name the well from which you will not drink.

It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was ... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world

Beat me instead," she cried, "It's not Darren's fault! I lost her, I let
her go
I cannot be free, I must be chained inside a house and
robbed of my hawk, you damned tyrant, but I will not have Preciosa
chained too!

I could write pages and pages about the delights of being a full-time housewife and mother and trying to write and support a family with two babies - but I don't use that kind of language in public.

For ever the world of Fairy drifts further from the world in which the Christ holds sway. I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world.

But the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people's beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not.

Even fiction - perhaps especially fiction - has more truth in it than the author knows.

The scandal's so unbelievable that I cannot repeat it here.

I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!

If there be any Gods at all, of which I am not even certain, I cannot believe they would stoop to meddle in the affairs of men. Nor will I wait upon the Gods to do what I see clearly must be done - who's to say that the Goddess cannot work through my hand as well as another.

But even the longest day wears to sunset.

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever

The symbol of the dragon should be always before them, that mankind seek to accomplish, not to think of sin and do penance!

A friend of ours has a hobby doing genealogy, and we found out that we were cousins in the ninth degree, that we had a common ancestor on the Mayflower.

Morgaine laughed and mocked, but when it was a real trouble, no one could be kinder.

I love her, Rajasta, I love her too much to hurt her; and I can give her nothing! No vows, no hope of real happiness, only sorrow and pain and, perhaps, shame ...

And indeed there is little opportunity for the old and poor to sin, except to doubt God's goodness, and if God cannot understand why we doubt that, then he is not as wise as his priests think, heh heh heh ...

And if the earth Gods wreak vengeance on the sinless and the sinful alike, then this further destruction cannot be punishment for sins, but is in the way of all nature.

You are sensitive - but make that your servant, not your master.

Remain yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always find one friend who doesn't lie.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

Pride, she thought drearily, was a cold bedfellow.

Perhaps mankind must have a time of darkness so that we will one day again know what a blessing is the light.

All the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world ...

Leave tomorrow's troubles for tomorrow's men to solve.

A woman is never free to bear a child unless she is also free to abort it.

I learned only so great a love of music as to be discontented with my own sounds.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?

There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!

If I, who am rhu'ad, do not break the laws," she said, "then no one will ever dare to break them, and our planet will stagnate in dead traditions.

The Christians seek to blot out all wisdom save their own; and in that strife they are banishing from this world all forms of mystery save that which will fit into their religious faith. They have pronounced it a heresy that men live more than one life - which every peasant knows to be true.

I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.