Tanith Lee: Trending quotes (page 6)

“It was, therefore, the sort of loveliness which is not perfect, but draws its charm from a measure of imbalance, which can accommodate flaws and make little of them, for a while at least.”

Tanith Lee book Drinking Sapphire Wine

Part 2, Chapter 1 (p. 60)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

Drawing , Perfection

“The bird stabs the worm, the big cat breaks the bird’s neck, the man casts his spear into the heart of the cat. That is how the world is. Even the man had better look behind him; the wolf may be near, or another man, or fate, the hungriest hunter of them all.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part II “The Warrior”, Chapter 2 (p. 44)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Fate , World , Cats , Bird

“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?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 102)

Failure , Light , Waiting , Night

“I know the old ways. There’s nothing evil there, only strange, and not even strange when you know it.”

Tanith Lee

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 9, “The Dark” (p. 98)

Way , Evil

“Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part II “The Water”, Chapter 1 (p. 170)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Death

“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.”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 9 (p. 84)

God , Princess

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

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 15 (p. 133)

Men

“There are two clever tricks men know. One is to make much of nothing. The second is to make nothing of much.”

Tanith Lee book Vazkor, Son of Vazkor

Book One, Part II “The Warrior”, Chapter 2 (p. 49)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Men

“Somewhere in me was a rod of steel to which I clung. I’d had a vision, as good as any vision given to any poet, sage, or prophet in the past. I wasn’t elated, I wasn’t confident even, but somehow, I knew, and with the end of doubt had come the death of despair.”

Tanith Lee book Drinking Sapphire Wine

Part 1, Chapter 10 (p. 57)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

Death , Confidence , Past , Despair

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

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 4, Chapter 4 (p. 122)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

Feeling , Universe , Evil

“Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.”

Tanith Lee Tales from the Flat Earth

Book 3 “The World’s Lure”, Chapter 5 “A Ship with Wings” (p. 167)
Tales from the Flat Earth, Night’s Master (1978)

World , Hate

“The year was woven on the loom, finished and folded away upon the pile of other years in the tall chests of Time.”

Tanith Lee Tales from the Flat Earth

Book 1 “Light Underground”, Chapter 6 “Kazir and Ferazhin” (p. 64)
Tales from the Flat Earth, Night’s Master (1978)

Time

“At that, I understood for sure I must not lose her, for the earth is not the earth without some light to see it by, and she was mine.”