Top 100 Tanith's Quotes
#1. I read 'Sabella or The Blood Stone' by Tanith Lee, which was hugely influential to me. I love Tanith's writing. She's just really lyrical, beautiful use of language.
Holly Black
#2. 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
#3. Louisa beheld the grounds and house with the calm pleasure of one who has seen nothing, been nowhere, expects everything, and has little imagination.
Tanith Lee
#4. I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing.
Tanith Lee
#5. She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death.
Tanith Lee
#6. Stephanie: I wouldn't mind a sister either
Tanith: Any chance of that happening?
Stephanie: I can't see what would be in it for my parents. I mean, they have the perfect daughter already - What more could they want?
Derek Landy
#7. I have faith," Tanith said. "As do I," said Ghastly. Valkyrie smiled at them gratefully. "So you think the plan will work?" "God, no," said Ghastly. "Sorry, Val," said Tanith.
Derek Landy
#8. Live and let love.
Love and let go.
Go live.
Tanith Lee
#9. You should visit before you pass judgement on a place.
Tanith Lee
#11. Would you like an interview for the drama, too?"
"I can't act."
"Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.
Tanith Lee
#12. And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event
Tanith Lee
#13. I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.
Tanith Lee
#14. Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.
Tanith Lee
#15. She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.
Tanith Lee
#16. When the night burned its cloak in the sunrise ...
Tanith Lee
#17. All the Scarabae - all but one - were crowded in the garden. They watched her. Their grim
old faces gave away nothing. Like elderly kiddies at a play they did not understand yet knew to be
important, they regarded her as she stood behind the gate.
Goodbye, she thought. Goodbye for ever.
Tanith Lee
#18. Once his scars were revealed, Tanith kissed him, once, on the lips. "I like steak," she said. "Can't go wrong with steak."
"Steak it is," he murmured.
He stepped away, and Valkyrie grinned at Tanith.
"Oh, good God," China said, rolling her eyes. "I do hope the Remnants kill me first.
Derek Landy
#19. It had occurred to me I was not courageous, had never been brave, only arrogant or unthinking.
Tanith Lee
#20. Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.
Tanith Lee
#21. 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
#22. He may harp in the Dark One's Hall and take no harm, who is a true harper.
Tanith Lee
#23. I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.
Tanith Lee
#24. Priests claimed the gods made men, but this was not so. Men made the gods. Firstly, by forming them in clay, by chipping them from stone. Secondly, and more importantly, by believing in them, believing in them utterly. During
Tanith Lee
#25. We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.
Tanith Lee
#26. At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.
Tanith Lee
#27. I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.
Tanith Lee
#28. 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
#29. It was the forest's fault. Those two handsome woodcutters. An evil place, the forest, everyone knew it, full of temptations and imps ...
Tanith Lee
#30. 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.
Tanith Lee
#31. I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.
Tanith Lee
#32. 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
#33. The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.
Tanith Lee
#34. The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.
Tanith Lee
#36. I tend not to analyse my work, though I'm frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.
Tanith Lee
#37. Did you know, and this is a fact here, did you know that most spiders are ugly? It's true. The woman spiders have it really hard time of it. I saw it on a documentary. Why do you think the Black Widow kills the guy she mates with? Shame, that's why - Tanith Low
Derek Landy
#38. I've been reading Tanith Lee since I was a teenager, beginning with 'The Birthgrave' and 'The Storm Lord.' Only recently did I discover, to my delight, how many more of her books I've yet to read.
Neal Asher
#39. I'm 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 I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!
Tanith Lee
#40. The kind of teacher who never learned anything herself. Or taught anything, except sarcasm or fear.
Tanith Lee
#41. Tanith: Serpine is used to the Elders taking forever to make their calm, thought-out decisions. So he won't be expecting anything as amazingly rash and reckless as this
Ghastly: That'll teach him to underestimate stupid people.
Derek Landy
#42. I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons.
Tanith Lee
#43. Tanith: have you called the police?
fergus: they, uh, they said theyd call by this afternoon.
tanith: tell them not to bother ... im his doctor.
beryl: what kind of doctor dresses in brown leather?
tanith: the kind that looks good init
Derek Landy
#44. 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
#45. Matter how sharp the corner they turned or how deep the pothole they plunged into, Ghastly and Tanith remained perfectly still. Fletcher, on the other hand, was being thrown about like an old shoe in a washing machine, and he did not appreciate it.
Derek Landy
#46. 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
#47. The Vazdru do not weep."
"Who weeps? Not I."
"Every word spoken was a tear.
Tanith Lee
#48. Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.
Tanith Lee
#50. 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
#51. We all have our dreams. May we find them, and God have mercy on us when we do.
Tanith Lee
#52. Azhrarn the Beautiful," said Chuz lovingly, "it is your beautiful madness I have come to see.
Tanith Lee
#53. Living With The Dead Molly Brown I
Tanith Lee
#54. Skulduggery, she's not being professional - Tanith Low
Derek Landy
#55. I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.
Tanith Lee
#56. Sanguine: That hurt
Tanith: I can make this easy on you
Sanguine: You gonna give me that sword of yours?
Tanith: No, but if you tell me what Baron Vengeous is planning, I'll let you walk away from here
Sanguine: But I drove here.
Derek Landy
#57. The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.
Tanith Lee
#58. Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.
Tanith Lee
#59. Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.
Tanith Lee
#60. Roilant caught himself, with exasperation, slipping into vacuous philosophy, a sure sign his opinion of life was at its very lowest.
Tanith Lee
#61. If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.
Tanith Lee
#62. What I remember is impossible. Against the law of God.' 'Why should you suppose that? You must permit God to grasp His own law rather better than fallible man, who has perhaps misunderstood.
Tanith Lee
#63. 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
#64. I do not think I was afraid. There must be substance to breed fear, and I was hollow.
Tanith Lee
#65. Don't ever," he said, "be afraid of me."
But I was. He'd driven a silver nail through my heart.
Tanith Lee
#66. Tanith immediately told them that Valkyrie had beaten up a priest and an old woman.
Derek Landy
#67. Yes, he was very dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than Vazkor, for his weapon was honesty.
Tanith Lee
#68. Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine
Tanith Lee
#69. 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
#70. 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.
Tanith Lee
#71. Israbel smiled once more. It was difficult to take your gaze away from her mouth - unless you looked into her eyes; and then you could only look at those ... ("Israbel")
Tanith Lee
#72. Men could not have too much. Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor and as Zhirem's cup was sure, so was his joylessness ... to die is a fear, but to live is a fear, also.
Tanith Lee
#73. I felt angry and silly in that feather-itch dress. I felt alone. But one always is, I suppose.
Tanith Lee
#75. If you run away from trouble, it always follows.'
Rather my impression, too. Though that never stopped me trying.
Tanith Lee
#76. He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.
Tanith Lee
#77. No one more cynical than an idealist.
Tanith Lee
#78. She braced herself for the pain of the perfect horn breaking her heart.
Tanith Lee
#79. Tanith: How did Skulduggery sound?
Valkyrie: Angry and worried; He's only OK when I'm attacked by people he knows. He'd never even heard of this Sangunie guy
Derek Landy
#80. Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?
Tanith Lee
#81. It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains; the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.
Tanith Lee
#82. Goddess," he said, "I would strongly advise you to continue this journey as you were - in your carriage." "Vazkor," I said, "I would strongly advise you not to advise me.
Tanith Lee
#83. The guilty are always the most prone to establish complementary guilt, and the most unforgiving thereafter.
Tanith Lee
#84. Sanguine: Shackles can't hold me, pretty lady. I'm immune to just about every binding spell I reckon you ever heard of, and a few more you haven't. That's what makes me special
Tanith: That and your psychopathic tendencies
Sanguine: Oh, they don't make me special. They just make me fun.
Derek Landy
#85. Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.
Tanith Lee
#87. Donegan Bane and Gracious O'Callahan - the Monster Hunters. Adventurers, inventors, authors of Monster Hunting for Beginners and it's sequels, Monster Hunting for Beginners is Probably Inadvisable and Seriously, Dude, Stop Monster Hunting.
Derek Landy
#88. There's a saying in High Egypt: The sky won't listen, so complain all you like.
Tanith Lee
#89. Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.
Tanith Lee
#90. 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
#91. Cow," Tanith muttered, and that was it, the floodgates opened, and Stephanie doubled over with laughter that echoed throughout the warehouse. Tanith pointed at Stephanie and backed away. "Skulduggery, she's not being professional!
Derek Landy
#92. 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.
Tanith Lee
#93. Im a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction.
Tanith Lee
#94. It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.
Tanith Lee
#95. Mirrors taught: Perhaps there were always at least two sorts of reality, what you credited, and what was true.
Tanith Lee
#96. Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.
Tanith Lee
#97. I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.
Tanith Lee
#98. I thought we were a team," Annis said.
Tanith looked down at her. "We are a team."
"And Sabine? Wasn't she part of it, too?"
"She was a very important part. She was payment."
"Are you going to betray us like you betrayed her?
Derek Landy
#99. As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.
Tanith Lee
#100. The dictate of the light says: Know yourself and what you are. The dark replies, By all means, but then become afraid.
Tanith Lee
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