Tanith Lee Quotes
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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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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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Precognition or self-deception?
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'Can I appeal?''Oh yes.''Will it do any good?''None whatsoever.'
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To fall suddenly sick when you have never been ill is a hard lesson. If it teaches anything, it teaches you that you must not trust to the thing you know, that it is better to build on shifting sand than the rock which may confound you on the day it shatters.
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The sun in his golden chariot had driven almost to the last meadow of the sky.
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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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'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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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.
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'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.'
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I know the old ways. There’s nothing evil there, only strange, and not even strange when you know it.
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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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Brother, sister, only words; but this, a reality, a destroyer at the gate. What could it have mattered, after all, to celebrate her hungry youth, and his, before the sword fell on her? All the plots and schemes, the moralities and codes of men, seemed dust in the face of death.
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There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning.
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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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The irony of her story is merely that her love became, in the end, her motive rather than her goal, the doorway rather than the house.
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What Is, is, what Was, was, but what is To Be, may be otherwise.
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Rewa was brave. At least, she was thick-witted enough to be able to ignore personal danger to a great extent.
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Odd, how different different men’s fears could be.
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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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The countryside meant grain and herds, and a river meant fish. And if the sky meant anything, it meant a cruel God who took no notice of their pains and chastised them if they sinned.
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She had never acquired in-between shades of character, had not had the opportunity. She had been utterly selfish, and was now selfless, because she had never become a whole person, did not like herself, or know herself. Nor had she ever gained sufficient wisdom to be properly horrified at what she meant to do. She couldn’t think that intensely.
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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 said, 'When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.'