Tanith Lee Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

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.

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

Tanith Lee
All in all he had not done badly out of the war, but the smells of it, the sights of it, and the cries of pain that attended it like the vultures, had sickened and soured him. Yes, he could fight well enough. And kill efficiently. He feared death, like other men, but could put that from his mind in battle, and he was no fool with a sword or knife. But several smoking ruins ago there had come a curious shift inside himself. He had lost his sense of purpose in the war; he supposed because it was not truly his own purpose but that of the King.

Tanith Lee
Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.

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

Tanith Lee
Now you understand, Rarm said to me. It was the last cut against yourself to become convinced of your own hideousness. You held to it and nurtured it, and even identified with the devil goddess of Orash in your determination to be accursed. And it never occurred to you that perhaps you saw a false image under the mountain.

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

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
The dictate of the light says: Know yourself and what you are. The dark replies, By all means, but then become afraid.

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

Tanith Lee
Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

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

Tanith Lee
How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on.

Tanith Lee
Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.

Tanith Lee
Don't judge yourself, he said. None of us are ever good at it.

Tanith Lee
I see you laugh, and rightly so. What is this silly old fool rambling on about? Good for you. Never respect years, only deeds.

Tanith Lee
They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.

Tanith Lee
Anyhow, I arrived, and I did feel pretty weird, actually, as if I'd left something behind. My head or something.

Tanith Lee
Uasti was a good teacher, he said. She made you look a little way into yourself, see what you could become.

Tanith Lee
I should have felt pity, but I felt only contempt. I knew had it been a girl she would have mourned less, and it angered me.

Tanith Lee
It was, therefore, the sort of loveliness which is not perfect, but draws its charm from a measure of imbalance, which can accommodate flaws and make little of them, for a while at least.

Tanith Lee
Madness. I did not get myself born to die. I have better things to 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
Vazkor had picked his creatures well—narrow, unintelligent men, good fighters, unafraid because they had no imagination, loyal because they responded to their own sense, and until now, there had always been enough food and wine, women and prestige; trustworthy in this last extremity because the old order had been good to them, and Vazkor seemed able to restore it.

Tanith Lee
We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.

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

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
There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning.

Tanith Lee