Tanith Lee Quotes

66 Sourced Quotes

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
For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor's mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago.

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
Thinta flew safely, and I realized how much I preferred being with Hergal and feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright. Actually when I'm with Hergal I always realize how much I prefer being with Thinta and not feeling the blood drain out of my head with fright.

Tanith Lee
When you fell in the sea, you should have heard them cheer. I made them rope the yard and fish you up. I said a ducking in water washes the witch-skill out of a woman until next full moon, and it would be bad luck to let you drown. How about that for a clever story? They'd believe anything if you make it sound silly enough.

Tanith Lee
I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.

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
I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the book were blank.
Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them…
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
I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.

Tanith Lee
I am alone. No one stands beside me. I have no Dark Prince to ride in my chariot, to walk with me, to hold me to him. I have no one. And yet. I myself, at last, I have myself. And to me, at this time, it seems enough. It seems more, much more, than enough.

Tanith Lee
All my life, I said, knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.

Tanith Lee
In the desert, initially, everywhere is like everywhere else—sky, sand, mountains. So far, this was the extent of what I'd seen in my involuntary roost. Then the day began to ebb, the world turned to topaz and gold, and the color of the sky seemed to sink away into the disc of the sun. I found I really could touch the beauty of it then, as I had touched its beauty so long ago when I was free to travel where I wished, and the city still owned me. Now, tinged with my sorrow, the loveliness was bittersweet, but strong as wine.

Tanith Lee
I raised my arms as if in prayer and heard the mutter of response behind me. Then I scattered the dried grains, red and brown and black, and studied the patterns they formed on the stone ledge before Sibbos. This is not such a mystic thing. You see what it is sensible to see, or else you interpret what you see so that the meaning comes out as you want it.

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

Tanith Lee
Somewhere in me was a rod of steel to which I clung. I'd had a vision, as good as any vision given to any poet, sage, or prophet in the past. I wasn't elated, I wasn't confident even, but somehow, I knew, and with the end of doubt had come the death of despair.

Tanith Lee
What do I care for the god? the woman suddenly screamed, catching up her dead child. What god is he that takes away my son and leaves me nothing?

Tanith Lee
Odd, how different different men's fears could be.

Tanith Lee
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.

Tanith Lee
White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled.

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

Tanith Lee
I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.

Tanith Lee
And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.

Tanith Lee
Well now, he said, was I as good as you were when you were me?

Tanith Lee
Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.

Tanith Lee
Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free.

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
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.

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

Tanith Lee