Tanith Lee Quotes - Page 2

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

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

It's lovely. I hate it.

How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on.

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

The dictate of the light says: Know yourself and what you are. The dark replies, By all means, but then become afraid.

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

It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.

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.

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

I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.

It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains; the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.

I hardly ever work from a synopsis -- I find they act like chains.

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

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.

I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.

When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!

Your dreams will betray you. Go nowhere on a horse that fades.

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.

World's flying like birds; my car's in flight. The city lights are spattered on my windshield like the fragments of the night. And I'm in flight. The sky's a wheel, a merry-go-round of wings and snow and steel, and fire. We'll tread the sky, we'll ride the scarlet horses.

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.

I am interested in most mythology. Celtic or Christian no more than anything else. I will admit to a pleasure and sense of hope in what I see as the basic teachings of Christ, stripped of the nonsense that has sometimes been accumulated about them and the embarrassing misunderstanding.

Tales of heroes end in bliss.