TANITH LEE QUOTES II

British author (1947- )

Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

TANITH LEE

Delirium's Mistress

Tags: time


It's lovely. I hate it.

TANITH LEE

Wolf Queen


I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.

TANITH LEE

interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009


The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

TANITH LEE

Delusion's Master

Tags: joy


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

TANITH LEE

interview, Nightmare Magazine, February 2014


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

TANITH LEE

The Silver Metal Lover


We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that's where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not necessarily a high priestess, but certainly the storyteller. And I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe.

TANITH LEE

"Love & Death & Publishers", Locus Magazine, April 1998


In the usual way 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. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

TANITH LEE

Tabula Rasa, October 1994


And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event.

TANITH LEE

Night's Master


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.

TANITH LEE

The Book of the Damned

Tags: books


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

Wolf Star


If you run away from trouble, it always follows.

TANITH LEE

Wolf Tower


She had always been far too afraid of losing her husband, or more properly, the financial parasol North had maintained over her head.

TANITH LEE

"A House on Fire", Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead


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

TANITH LEE

Black Unicorn

Tags: change


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

Tabula Rasa, October 1994


In the greater part of humankind there resides an instinct for survival. It is this which can clutch at straws and effect a rescue from them. It is this which can, now and then, outwit fate.

TANITH LEE

"A House on Fire", Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead

Tags: survival


Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.

TANITH LEE

Delirium's Mistress

Tags: love


Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine.

TANITH LEE

Night's Master

Tags: morning


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

TANITH LEE

The Silver Metal Lover


Tales of heroes end in bliss.

TANITH LEE

Mortal Suns

Tags: heroes