Tanith Lee Quotes

Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.

All in all he had not done badly out of the war, but the smells of it, the sights of it, and the cries of pain that attended it like the vultures, had sickened and soured him. Yes, he could fight well enough. And kill efficiently. He feared death, like other men, but could put that from his mind in battle, and he was no fool with a sword or knife. But several smoking ruins ago there had come a curious shift inside himself. He had lost his sense of purpose in the war; he supposed because it was not truly his own purpose but that of the King.

Oh, dutiful daughter," said Azhrarn. "You are to be a goddess somewhere, for I would teach this world the nature of gods."
"And what is their nature?" she said.
"Indifferent and cruel. And loving not mankind.

Like many a longed-for gift, it was, in possession, unwelcome.

I had not yet learned the lesson that when you are forever telling yourself that such and such is worth the price, then the price is too high and has been paid too often.

We see what we have always seen. If it seems, it is.

He took her virginity with the gentle care of love, and with love’s glorious violence.

I will suppose that all humankind have souls, a condition which, when sober, I do not hold.

He showed no fear. It seemed that, at the commencement, his race had known gods and no other. Gods had bound and ill treated and slaughtered and played with them. Gods were a fact, as were the sun and the shaking of the earth. Just another terrible reality.

Sometimes the communications between these two partners are so complex, and have so many permutations, that I can't follow them. Their relationship seems to be a little like chess, but without the rules.

A tomb contains the dead, who are properly immobile and unspeaking. Though Masrians leave lamps for the ghosts, nobody expects they will be lighted.

Who would dare invite such a smoke? To some it might be healing, but to others, bane. Breathed in at the nostrils, it seemed to fill the eyes and ears and brain. To a man who knew many things, it would reveal many more, to a man who knew little it would reveal too much. Its name was self-knowledge.

No, she is cruel and pitiless and indifferent (which we have learned, through her teaching, the gods are to mankind—and indeed, have not the lessons of our lives ceaselessly informed us this was so?).

I woke in the dawn. The plains of the Wilderness were exploding into light. It was the first hour of day, one of the two most beautiful hours of the desert, where sunrise and sunset are the queen and king.

Power is the wine after which all other wine is mud.