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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'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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Precognition or self-deception?
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No one is ever ordinary.
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Pirates have always fascinated me.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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'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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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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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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'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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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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Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.
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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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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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Kernik had stumbled on an immutable truth, a truth older than the world. 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.
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The sun in his golden chariot had driven almost to the last meadow of the sky.
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There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning.