Tanith Lee Quotes
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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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For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor’s mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago.
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Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free.
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Who knew? If the illusion is quite perfect, who is to say it is not real?
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It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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They say the promise of a witch is like a plain woman, seldom remembered.
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It was as easy to be alone with six kin as it is to be alone by yourself, and maybe easier.
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I began to feel lighthearted. Don’t ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.
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'I have a plan,' said Xaros, 'improbable only in its genius.'
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'Sorry,' I said sweetly, 'I’m the new one with the quick temper and the uncontrollable homicidal tendencies.'
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When a road is very dark it is hard to see the milestones on it.
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The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining.
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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.
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'‘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.'
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They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Night, the dark widow, came walking on the hills.
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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.