Tanith Lee Quotes

Sometimes, you can't help seeing yourself as the hero of your own story.

Would you like an interview for the drama, too?"
"I can't act."
"Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.

Robespierre, crippled and blind, has yet to be healed to the knowledge that service - his desire - is a deed of savage-speaking gentleness, not soft-spoken savagery.

Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing we have begun, at last, to understand.

The Vazdru do not weep."
"Who weeps? Not I."
"Every word spoken was a tear.

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

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

I hardly ever work from a synopsis
I find they act like chains.

Everything now had been taken from him, his striving after goodness, his hopes, his pride, even that human revenge upon fate--to destroy his own life-- for he was invulnerable. A terrible predicament he was in, to be utterly suicidal, and unable to perish.

Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clich?d dark and stormy night, I found the magical inn, its windows golden lit, and Summer was due to start tomorrow. I can only work at one thing well. Deprive me of that, and my "back-up plan," even now, will be the empty, stormy, darkened heath
where, incidentally, even unpublished, somehow I'll still be writing.

Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.

Why hope to be happy?
Before, it had been like a tide of water, (life), not especially fast, passing over her. Not happy. Not unhappy. Indifferent. There was music and there were books. The rest was an interruption. Live second-hand.

Live and let love.
Love and let go.
Go live.

Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond
that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.

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.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

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

Living With The Dead Molly Brown I

This sight was terrible, more terrible than words can convey, for words are cowards as men are, and hide things as men do.

The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.

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

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

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

I will pay you in trouble and terror.

People are always the start for me ... animals, when I can get into their heads, gods, supernatural beings, immortals, the dead ... these are all people to me.

Is any world quite sensible?

I loved him, just for a minute. I loved him and I grieved for him and my pity was part of the beauty, before the shame began.

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

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

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

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.

Azhrarn, Lord of Terrors, terrified.

I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing.

Louisa beheld the grounds and house with the calm pleasure of one who has seen nothing, been nowhere, expects everything, and has little imagination.

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.

I came up with a parallel Venice called Venus. set in a parallel Venice about 1701.

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

Free of me, I was whole.

A rose by any other name Would get the blame For being what it is
The colour of a kiss, The shadow of a flame. A rose may earn another name, So call it love; So call it love I will, And love is like the sea, Which changes constantly, And yet is still The same.

What I remember is impossible. Against the law of God.' 'Why should you suppose that? You must permit God to grasp His own law rather better than fallible man, who has perhaps misunderstood.

Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.

It had occurred to me I was not courageous, had never been brave, only arrogant or unthinking.

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

In the greater part of humankind there resides an instinct for survival. It is this which can clutch at straws and effect a rescue from them. It is this which can, now and then, outwit fate.

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

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.

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.

In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.

Having told of so much beauty, how is it possible to tell of her? There are no words left on the earth in any tongue that will do. Such words vanished from the world when it shook itself free from the ocean of chaos, in a cataclysm that reshaped it like one of the balls small children throw in the air at play.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

When the night burned its cloak in the sunrise ...

I like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen.

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.

I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons.

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

All the Scarabae - all but one - were crowded in the garden. They watched her. Their grim
old faces gave away nothing. Like elderly kiddies at a play they did not understand yet knew to be
important, they regarded her as she stood behind the gate.
Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye for ever.

It was so useful to lie with the truth.

Pirates have always fascinated me.

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

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

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.

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.

Priests claimed the gods made men, but this was not so. Men made the gods. Firstly, by forming them in clay, by chipping them from stone. Secondly, and more importantly, by believing in them, believing in them utterly. During

I do not think I was afraid. There must be substance to breed fear, and I was hollow.

Israbel smiled once more. It was difficult to take your gaze away from her mouth - unless you looked into her eyes; and then you could only look at those ... ("Israbel")

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.

I was reading some complex books in my own youth-and no, I didnt always understand every word, let alone every concept-but I got the main thrust, which was like a lifeline in a fluctuating world.

Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

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

I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.

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

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

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.

There's a saying in High Egypt: The sky won't listen, so complain all you like.

He ached with weariness, but it became part of him; he scarcely noticed now that he was weary, he might always have been thus, it was so familiar to him.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

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

She saw the different times at sea - calm blue days, raw pea-green ones, others when the skies turned black and thunderbolts blasted the masts, and the galloping waves. The ship then leaned this way, another way, seeming to want to throw herself right over and upside down. Had Art ever been frightened? Maybe only once. One of the earliest memories, this. Molly standing braced, holding Art, two or three years old, in her arms. 'What a spectacle!' cried Molly. 'Look - how beautiful it is!' And then, 'Don't ever be afraid of the sea. She's the best friend out kind have got. Better than any land, however fair. Respect the sea, yes, but don't ever think what the sea does is cruel or unjust. People are that. The sea is only herself. And this ship - she's lucky. She's friends with this sea. They know how to behave with each other.' Exactly then, a great green salt wave swamped the decks. Canvas was being hauled in, Molly's crew clutching and swinging like monkeys along the masts. Art and Molly, soaked, and Molly saying, 'And even if we went down, don't fear that either. Those that the sea keeps sleep among mermaids and pearls and sunken kingdoms. You wouldn't mind that, would you, love?

She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.

She could not mourn. She could no longer weep grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.

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.

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

It's lovely. I hate it.

I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.

Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.

The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.

You should visit before you pass judgement on a place.

Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

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

No man to lord, no child to hold.

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.'
Rather my impression, too. Though that never stopped me trying.

Often misunderstood, Dionysus is far more than a wine deity. He is the Breaker of Chains, who rescues not only the flesh but the heart and spirit from too much of worldly regulations and duties. He is a god of joy and freedom. Any uncultivated, tangled, and primal woodland is very much his domain.

And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

There was no violence, no speed. It moved to the rhythm of an elder dance, putting all the rituals of the world to shame. Black, silver, gold and moon-opal, night and sea, fire, earth, air and water.

She has a lot of opinions, which is restful, as that way I don't have to have many of my own.