Top 120 Tanith Lee Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It’s very selfish when I write. I’m not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I’m not even really aware of writing for myself.”

— Tanith Lee

52. “Robespierre, crippled and blind, has yet to be healed to the knowledge that service – his desire – is a deed of savage-speaking gentleness, not soft-spoken savagery.”

— Tanith Lee

53. “And I will love you; for such as I am, I do not give my love lightly, but once given it is sure. Only remember this, if ever you make an enemy of me, your life shall be as dust or sand in the wind. For what a demon loves and loses he will destroy, and my power is the mightiest you are ever likely to know.”

— Tanith Lee

54. “Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.”

— Tanith Lee

55. “Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor.”

— Tanith Lee

56. “It was so useful to lie with the truth.”

— Tanith Lee

57. “I came up with a parallel Venice called Venus. set in a parallel Venice about 1701.”

— Tanith Lee

58. “Tales of heroes end in bliss.”

— Tanith Lee

59. “I like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen.”

— Tanith Lee

60. “I loved him, just for a minute. I loved him and I grieved for him and my pity was part of the beauty, before the shame began.”

— Tanith Lee

61. “I also love Disney, and will defend doing so, because there’s so much in those films and I don’t care if it’s stereotyped.”

— Tanith Lee

62. “As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.”

— Tanith Lee

63. “Madness. I did not get myself born to die. I have better things to do.”

— Tanith Lee

64. “This sight was terrible, more terrible than words can convey, for words are cowards as men are, and hide things as men do.”

— Tanith Lee

65. “When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!”

— Tanith Lee

66. “I’ve been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.”

— Tanith Lee

67. “Sometimes, you can’t help seeing yourself as the hero of your own story.”

— Tanith Lee

68. “No man to lord, no child to hold.”

— Tanith Lee

69. “He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.”

— Tanith Lee

70. “When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.”

— Tanith Lee

71. “I hardly ever work from a synopsis – I find they act like chains.”

— Tanith Lee

72. “It’s lovely. I hate it.”

— Tanith Lee

73. “Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.”

— Tanith Lee

74. “The graves are, he suggests, only stone bookmarks left in pages of earth.”

— Tanith Lee

75. “The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?”

— Tanith Lee

76. “I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.”

— Tanith Lee

77. “I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?”

— Tanith Lee

78. “There’s a saying in High Egypt: The sky won’t listen, so complain all you like.”

— Tanith Lee

79. “I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.”

— Tanith Lee

80. “Everything now had been taken from him, his striving after goodness, his hopes, his pride, even that human revenge upon fate – to destroy his own life – for he was invulnerable. A terrible predicament he was in, to be utterly suicidal, and unable to perish.”

— Tanith Lee

81. “I do not think I was afraid. There must be substance to breed fear, and I was hollow.”

— Tanith Lee

82. “I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.”

— Tanith Lee

83. “You should visit before you pass judgment on a place.”

— Tanith Lee

84. “Writers tell stories better, because they’ve had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.”

— Tanith Lee

85. “Free of me, I was whole.”

— Tanith Lee

86. “She could not mourn. She could no longer weep grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.”

— Tanith Lee

87. “If I ever get to 100, I’d want to be filled with wonder and wild, adolescent, wide-eyed interest in newness. So let’s keep the flame burning. Let’s stop thinking everyone over 29, or 49, has to be reinforced by concrete.”

— Tanith Lee

88. “I tend not to analyse my work, though I’m frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.”

— Tanith Lee

89. “Im writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and Im very greedy, and I really enjoy it!”

— Tanith Lee

90. “Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing we have begun, at last, to understand.”

— Tanith Lee

91. “He ached with weariness, but it became part of him; he scarcely noticed now that he was weary, he might always have been thus, it was so familiar to him.”

— Tanith Lee

92. “I was reading some complex books in my own youth-and no, I didnt always understand every word, let alone every concept-but I got the main thrust, which was like a lifeline in a fluctuating world.”

— Tanith Lee

93. “I just love writing. It’s magical, it’s somewhere else to go, it’s somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.”

— Tanith Lee

94. “Then he was gone, and all the colors and the light of the day crumbled and went out.”

— Tanith Lee

95. “It had occurred to me I was not courageous, had never been brave, only arrogant or unthinking.”

— Tanith Lee

96. “He sang. The robot sang. He sang into my veins where my blood had been and where instead the notes and throbbing of the guitar now flowed. I could feel his song vibrating in my throat, as if I sang it too. I couldn’t see him. If the crowd parted and I saw him, I would die.”

— Tanith Lee

97. “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.”

— Tanith Lee

98. “In the late summer afternoon, the river lay thin and shallow among its smooth stones.”

— Tanith Lee

99. “You, too, are a fool, earthborn, to trust in demon-kind and to ride on a mare of smoke and night. What demons love they slay in the end, and the gifts of demons are snares. Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.”

— Tanith Lee

100. “Despair, the worst of all the deadly sins, since it is denial of the self, of the god-in-self, since it is so seductive, like the snow-death, so warm. Ah, who would tear himself to pieces when he might lie down in such arms, in comfort, and cease. Bless you, my despair, my dear and loving despair. So painlessly you take my pain away. Oh Father, by no means dash the cup from my lips -.”

— Tanith Lee