Top 35 R. Lee Smith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Beginning the day in a bad mood made it awfully easy to find reasons to stay there.”

— R. Lee Smith

2. “If you cannot have an easy journey, have an interesting story.”

— R. Lee Smith

3. “This book is dedicated to my grandfather and to his habit of keeping books with such marvelously terrifying illustrations down on the bottom shelf where any little kid could read it.”

— R. Lee Smith

4. “Our past does not define us unless we allow it to do so,” he said instead. “The circumstances of years ago should never force you into a role you have not wished for yourself.”

— R. Lee Smith

5. “Women are like handfuls of sand. They all rub up under your scales now and then, but the finest ones do put a polish on a man.”

— R. Lee Smith

6. “It is a wife’s duty and pleasure to lessen her husband’s burdens.” “Says who, lizardman?” “Prophet Lashraq, as written in Sheul’s true Word.” “You mean a man wrote it.” “But.”

— R. Lee Smith

7. “Father, forgive me,” he thought, staring into the sky where the light of the sun stared back at him behind the clouds. “Truth does not care if it comforts her. But I do.”

— R. Lee Smith

8. “Meoraq swung around and raked his eyes over the whole of them. “Who dares order me to silence?” “I do,” said Amber. “Shut up.”

— R. Lee Smith

9. “The sky was full of fog, with the sun behind it turning it all to a single color – not quite white, but pale and promising, like a blank page where anything could be written. Anything at all.”

— R. Lee Smith

10. “Don’t make fun of me,” Lan snapped. “I’m illiterate, not stupid! I know there’s no B in subtle!”

— R. Lee Smith

11. “Because you told me the truth, even when you thought it was something I did not want to hear. That is how I know how much you love me. I do not need to be told.”

— R. Lee Smith

12. “I had but one love and it is gone and now there is nothing and I tell you, that is the most awful feeling in the world.”

— R. Lee Smith

13. “What do you think of me?”

— R. Lee Smith

14. “Forever. What do you know of forever?” He asked with undisguised contempt. “What do you know of death?”

— R. Lee Smith

15. “There is no night, however dark and filled with woe, that is not followed by dawn.”

— R. Lee Smith

16. “For now, his talk may be exciting, but it will pale with time. He will repeat himself and embellish on his lies, and doubts will grow. When we reach the temple and they see no reward for their wrong-placed faith, yes, it will be difficult, but they will come away stronger, for even the unkindest truth strengthens a man more than the prettiest lie.”

— R. Lee Smith

17. “You’re alive, Lan,” he said. “You’re not ‘his’ anything.”

— R. Lee Smith

18. “No, it is not. I give you a portion of my stolen wealth. You give me all you have.”

— R. Lee Smith

19. “The bad nights made the good ones impossible to enjoy; the good nights made the bad ones worse.”

— R. Lee Smith

20. “He told her not to speak or look at him. He told her not to try to kiss him. He told her she was beautiful. Then he lay her down and lay beside her and he said nothing more.”

— R. Lee Smith

21. “What’s your planet’s name?” He regarded her closely, and said, “Jota,” in a tone that was half-question. She looked faintly insulted. “Like I’m supposed to know that? Hey, I’m a human, but the planet’s name is not Hum.”

— R. Lee Smith

22. “But once that question popped out there, it couldn’t be ignored. You couldn’t put toothpaste back in the tube; once you’d seen Waldo, you might as well throw the book away.”

— R. Lee Smith

23. “It is skin, Daria. Skin. It keeps the life in our bodies and it keeps the weather from getting in. It does not define us. It does not command us. It is only skin.”

— R. Lee Smith

24. “She’d become her own ghost, haunting her own life.”

— R. Lee Smith

25. “Strange, how the world could move on even when it had been shaken to its foundations.”

— R. Lee Smith

26. “Crying was a pointless little-girl thing to do and it hadn’t fixed one goddamn thing since it had been invented by the very first pointless little girl. Problems only got solved when you did something about them.”

— R. Lee Smith

27. “So tell me, oh unhappy human, what ir your suffering to mine?”

— R. Lee Smith

28. “It was just boring, is all. I knew better than to think there was going to be booze after all this time, but still, only thing worse than being sober in a pub is being sober in ten of them.”

— R. Lee Smith

29. “I don’t know humans, but I know fools. And I know the surest way to encourage fools to follow a wicked man is to tell them not to.”

— R. Lee Smith

30. “In the tee-vee programs, males who saved the lives of females were frequently rewarded with adoration and affection. The tee-vee misrepresented many things.”

— R. Lee Smith

31. “The world is filled with fools like S’kot, and worse, with the fools who let them act as wardens over them. They deserve each other. I don’t care what they think of me and neither should you.”

— R. Lee Smith

32. “Think, not of what you win or lose, but of what you learn and what you teach, and you will always have the advantage.”

— R. Lee Smith

33. “Damn you! Hear me now and hear me well. If you die, I will raze your Norwood. I will raze all of them – every village every waystation, every wall. I will make the whole of this world your grave. Do you hear me? How could you do this to me? How could you dare? Answer me!”

— R. Lee Smith

34. “Intuition is nothing but long stripes of perception squeezed into small spaces.”

— R. Lee Smith

35. “No,” the stranger agreed. “It is yours. Each man builds his own House and it will always be haunted.”

— R. Lee Smith

36. “I should hate to see our own race judged by the darkest deeds of the worst men at the most evil hours of our history.”

— R. Lee Smith