Tanith Lee Quotes
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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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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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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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I said, 'When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.'
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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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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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'‘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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True beauty is always oddly surprising.
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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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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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They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.
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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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'Well now,' he said, 'was I as good as you were when you were me?'
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'All my life,' I said, 'knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.'
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We see what we have always seen. If it seems, it is.
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The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining.
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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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'I have a plan,' said Xaros, 'improbable only in its genius.'
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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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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.
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What a son I’ve made. The midwives must have turned me in my labor so that I lay on your brain and crushed it.
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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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Odd, how different different men’s fears could be.
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'But what am I to do?' cried the Prince.'What you feel you must,' said the Theel. 'That’s the only thing to do at any time.'