Tanith Lee: Trending quotes (page 4)

“They were very careful and kind. So careful and kind it was positively tactless and spiteful.”

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 4, Chapter 1 (p. 114)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

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

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 100)

“The sun in his golden chariot had driven almost to the last meadow of the sky.”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 1 (p. 9; opening line)

Sun

““But what am I to do?” cried the Prince.
“What you feel you must,” said the Theel. “That’s the only thing to do at any time.””

Tanith Lee

Source: Prince on a White Horse (1982), Chapter 4 “The Dragon of Brass” (p. 207)

Feeling , Time

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

Tanith Lee book East of Midnight

Source: East of Midnight (1977), Chapter 2, “Full Moon” (p. 24; often repeated)

Love , Singing , Sun

“I have a plan,” said Xaros, “improbable only in its genius.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 22 (p. 310)

“Odd, how different different men’s fears could be.”

Tanith Lee

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 1, “Avillis” (p. 7)

Men , Fear

“There were clouds like sharks with open jaws in the sky that morning.”

Tanith Lee

Source: Short fiction, The Winter Players (1976), Chapter 6, “Blue Cave” (p. 170)

“Who knew? If the illusion is quite perfect, who is to say it is not real?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 9 (p. 78)

Perfection

“A man hunted only for food or clothing or in self-defense. It was another mark of the effete and the sadistic to take life as a sport.”

Tanith Lee book The Storm Lord

Source: The Storm Lord (1976), Chapter 11 (p. 155)

Life , Food , Sport , Clothes

“True beauty is always oddly surprising.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 353)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Beauty

“All my life,” I said, “knowledge has come to me for which I was not ready.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 1 (p. 379)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Life , Knowledge

“I said, “When you are on your deathbed, Erran, pray that you never meet me in the place you are going to.””

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book Two, Part I “Yellow City”, Chapter 5 (p. 156)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“I am alone. No one stands beside me. I have no Dark Prince to ride in my chariot, to walk with me, to hold me to him. I have no one. And yet. I myself, at last, I have myself. And to me, at this time, it seems enough. It seems more, much more, than enough.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 6 (p. 408; closing words)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Time

“Vazkor had picked his creatures well—narrow, unintelligent men, good fighters, unafraid because they had no imagination, loyal because they responded to their own sense, and until now, there had always been enough food and wine, women and prestige; trustworthy in this last extremity because the old order had been good to them, and Vazkor seemed able to restore it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part V “Tower-Eshkorek”, Chapter 4 (p. 305)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Women , Men , Food , Imagination

“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.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 3 (p. 20)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

God , Truth , Soul , Wine

“Now there was that look of waiting, and submission—not the frenzy of the stadium, but the quiet sleep-trance of belief. Something stirred in me at it, as I realized I had them in my palm. I stood very still in my white and black, holding the copper things in my hands, and then I began to walk between them toward the god. And I laughed at the god as I went toward him. You—what are you? And he had no answer for me, for here it was the priest who was the power, not the god, poor empty stone.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

God , Sleep , Waiting

“I raised my arms as if in prayer and heard the mutter of response behind me. Then I scattered the dried grains, red and brown and black, and studied the patterns they formed on the stone ledge before Sibbos. This is not such a mystic thing. You see what it is sensible to see, or else you interpret what you see so that the meaning comes out as you want it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 3 (p. 155)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Study

“For an instant a half-formed prayer struggled into Havor’s mouth. But he could not utter it. Not for himself. For him those words were already drowned by the noise the thong-whip had made, or the sounds of children crying out of hunger or the cold or sheer misery in that grey house of orphans in the far North, eight years ago.”

Tanith Lee

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 7, “The Snow-Waste” (p. 69)

Hunger , Children , Housing , Cry

“The Prince then remembered the white-haired Theel in the Castle of Bone, who had also been kind, if a little odd, and he wondered why such nice creatures always seemed to live in bad places with wicked things going on all around them.
“That’s easy,” said the girl, seeming to read his thoughts as the other Theel had done. “The bad places are where we can do the most good.””

Tanith Lee

Source: Prince on a White Horse (1982), Chapter 8 “The Tower of the Purple Knight” (pp. 231-232)

Girl , Reading