Tanith Lee Quotes
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Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?
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It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.
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I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?
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I see you laugh, and rightly so. What is this silly old fool rambling on about? Good for you. Never respect years, only deeds.
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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.
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Precognition or self-deception?
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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.
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'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?'
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Tonight it was to be a play for aristocrats to watch, concerning gods and shepherds; it was the humble villages that clamored for princesses and emperors.
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Pirates have always fascinated me.
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'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.'
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No one is ever ordinary.
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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.
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Naturally, the little wars were dressed up in ritual and significance. War spear challenge was followed by war dance, and invocation of demons, the one-eyed snake and diverse totems. I bowed to none of these, having seen early the vulgarity and impotence of the tribal pantheon. Generally men create gods in their own image.
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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.
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There are two clever tricks men know. One is to make much of nothing. The second is to make nothing of much.
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I had not yet learned the lesson that when you are forever telling yourself that such and such is worth the price, then the price is too high and has been paid too often.
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'I think Kathaos fears no divine forces.''Then he’s a brave man.''Oh, men make their own gods,' Yannul remarked. 'I have a god with a fat belly, and a house full of expensive women to attend his every need, and I call him Yannul the Lan in Five Years from This.'
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As for their healers and their worship of gold books of old lore, there had been tribal stories of this, too, all nonsense, as anything chattered by the ill-informed must be.
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There is one sound way a man can bind a woman to him, the same way she will bind him, and with the same rope.
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A man hunted only for food or clothing or in self-defense. It was another mark of the effete and the sadistic to take life as a sport.
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Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.
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This sight was terrible, more terrible than words convey, for words are cowards as men are, and hide things as men do.
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Lir chiseled at the stone. It would take a month to make a perceptible impression on it. He had a few hours. Work harder, then.