Tanith Lee Quotes
-
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.
-
'‘Not everything that walks is a man,’' said the boulder conversationally, '‘and not everything that lies quiet is a stone,’ as the wolf remarked when the serpent bit him.'
-
I began to feel lighthearted. Don’t ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.
-
This was the custom of the tribes, and perhaps, in the fogs of their pasts, the scheme had had its reasons. Yet like many of their ways, only the peel remained, the fruit was long gone.
-
I should have felt pity, but I felt only contempt. I knew had it been a girl she would have mourned less, and it angered me.
-
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.
-
When a road is very dark it is hard to see the milestones on it.
-
We see what we have always seen. If it seems, it is.
-
Now I saw braves hang themselves with amulets, leave tidbits for spirits, and still take an arrow in the neck. I, worshiping nothing and bribing nothing with prayers, rode among an enemy unscathed, scything them like summer wheat.
-
Odd, how different different men’s fears could be.
-
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.
-
At some point, Dekteon saw, his own world had come close to such a religion, where women ruled and men died-but the road had taken a different turning. Now the hints of the ancient mystery remained only in songs. It was the men who were the masters. Maybe not for the better, and not for the worse, either. But all this was unimportant.
-
'I have a plan,' said Xaros, 'improbable only in its genius.'
-
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.
-
They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.
-
Rewa was brave. At least, she was thick-witted enough to be able to ignore personal danger to a great extent.
-
The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining.
-
They say the promise of a witch is like a plain woman, seldom remembered.
-
A day out from the bay of Saardos, Drokler honored the brass Rorn god in the prow with a pound of incense.The blank god mask stared back at them through the pall of sweet blue smoke....It gazed in myopic stillness out over the long shock of the waves, ignoring their words, their presence, their costly offering.
-
It was as easy to be alone with six kin as it is to be alone by yourself, and maybe easier.
-
Who knew? If the illusion is quite perfect, who is to say it is not real?
-
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.
-
True beauty is always oddly surprising.
-
The rites were just the husks left over from deeper things, no pith remaining and no mystery, nothing to lift up the soul or go to the brain like wine. And, as generally happens, the more truth the ritual lost the more they bolstered it with significance. There is a saying among the Moi: The chief is clad in gold and purple, only the god dares to go naked.