Tanith Lee Quotes
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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.
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The bird stabs the worm, the big cat breaks the bird’s neck, the man casts his spear into the heart of the cat. That is how the world is. Even the man had better look behind him; the wolf may be near, or another man, or fate, the hungriest hunter of them all.
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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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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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No one is ever ordinary.
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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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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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Precognition or self-deception?
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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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'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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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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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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'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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'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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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.
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Pirates have always fascinated me.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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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'Like most loners,' said Moddik, 'you carry the seeds of violent authority. Loners need to be bossy. They quickly learn it’s the only method they have of shoving people off their backs.'
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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.