Tanith Lee Quotes

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.

Naturally, the little wars were dressed up in ritual and significance. War spear challenge was followed by war dance, and invocation of demons, the one-eyed snake and diverse totems. I bowed to none of these, having seen early the vulgarity and impotence of the tribal pantheon. Generally men create gods in their own image.

This was the custom of the tribes, and perhaps, in the fogs of their pasts, the scheme had had its reasons. Yet like many of their ways, only the peel remained, the fruit was long gone.

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.

The sacrifice lives, but the sun’s still shining.

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.

Rewa was brave. At least, she was thick-witted enough to be able to ignore personal danger to a great extent.

The moon walks east of midnight,
The sun walks west of noon.
And though I love you, sweetheart,
I will not sing your tune.

The irony of her story is merely that her love became, in the end, her motive rather than her goal, the doorway rather than the house.

What Is, is, what Was, was, but what is To Be, may be otherwise.

Woana was the most talented, amazing and prodigious human in the world, and the most beautiful too. For Woana, if she had summoned them, those bright eyes in the sky would have danced down to earth; but naturally Woana was far too sophisticated to stoop to such a thing. Woana was, in fact, unrivalled, peerless. The reason being that Mitz belonged to her, and Mitz’s feline ego would never consider that anyone, but the most sublime, could have acquired her own exceptional self.

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

Having failed, do you accept failure, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn to other things? When night comes, do you accept the blackness of it, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn and wait for morning? Or do you go on striving to light a candle against that dark however often the wind blows out the flame, however often the night returns?

They say the promise of a witch is like a plain woman, seldom remembered.

Tonight it was to be a play for aristocrats to watch, concerning gods and shepherds; it was the humble villages that clamored for princesses and emperors.