Tanith Lee Quotes

The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.

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.

For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.

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

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.

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.

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.

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

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal — not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading — that’s just literary lust.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

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