Tanith Lee Quotes page 2

“True beauty is always oddly surprising.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.””

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

“I should have felt pity, but I felt only contempt. I knew had it been a girl she would have mourned less, and it angered me.”

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

“Now I saw braves hang themselves with amulets, leave tidbits for spirits, and still take an arrow in the neck. I, worshiping nothing and bribing nothing with prayers, rode among an enemy unscathed, scything them like summer wheat.”

Book Two, Part II “The Water”, Chapter 1 (p. 173)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Precognition or self-deception?”

Book One, Part I “The Krarl”, Chapter 4 (p. 31)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“Lir chiseled at the stone. It would take a month to make a perceptible impression on it. He had a few hours. Work harder, then.”

Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 3 (p. 219)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 14 “Lir: The Night-Beast” (p. 119)

“Night, the dark widow, came walking on the hills.”

““Is it the regency you want, or me?”
“The regency. You, sweetheart, are the worthless dross that comes with it.””

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 69)

“The irony of her story is merely that her love became, in the end, her motive rather than her goal, the doorway rather than the house.”

Book 1, “The Amber Witch” Chapter 3 (p. 47)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“In the desert, initially, everywhere is like everywhere else—sky, sand, mountains. So far, this was the extent of what I’d seen in my involuntary roost. Then the day began to ebb, the world turned to topaz and gold, and the color of the sky seemed to sink away into the disc of the sun. I found I really could touch the beauty of it then, as I had touched its beauty so long ago when I was free to travel where I wished, and the city still owned me. Now, tinged with my sorrow, the loveliness was bittersweet, but strong as wine.”

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 22 (p. 192)

“The sea was a phenomenon I had never clapped eyes on for myself, yet it seemed, from the tales, a destination ultimate and uncompromising. The ocean’s edge, the brink of the land; the lip of Chaos.”

Part 2, Chapter 3 (pp. 69-70)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

“It was as easy to be alone with six kin as it is to be alone by yourself, and maybe easier.”

Book Two, Part II “The Wolf Hunt”, Chapter 2 (p. 173)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“All in all he had not done badly out of the war, but the smells of it, the sights of it, and the cries of pain that attended it like the vultures, had sickened and soured him. Yes, he could fight well enough. And kill efficiently. He feared death, like other men, but could put that from his mind in battle, and he was no fool with a sword or knife. But several smoking ruins ago there had come a curious shift inside himself. He had lost his sense of purpose in the war; he supposed because it was not truly his own purpose but that of the King.”

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 8 (pp. 73-74)

“Anackire asks nothing because she needs nothing, being everything,” Raldnor said tightly, using a quotation of the temple.
The Ommos laughed gently and shook his head.
“Such undemanding gods.”

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 1, “Avillis” (p. 4)

“Brother, sister, only words; but this, a reality, a destroyer at the gate. What could it have mattered, after all, to celebrate her hungry youth, and his, before the sword fell on her? All the plots and schemes, the moralities and codes of men, seemed dust in the face of death.”

Book 2, “Ruins and Bright Towers” Chapter 5 (p. 79)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free.”

Book Two, Part III “The Island”, Chapter 2 (p. 215)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

“The countryside meant grain and herds, and a river meant fish. And if the sky meant anything, it meant a cruel God who took no notice of their pains and chastised them if they sinned.”

Source: Short fiction, Companions on the Road (1975), Chapter 2, “The Chalice” (p. 16)

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 12 “Lir: The Walled Town” (p. 102)

“Sorry,” I said sweetly, “I’m the new one with the quick temper and the uncontrollable homicidal tendencies.”

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 96)
Don't Bite the Sun (1976)

“Like most loners,” said Moddik, “you carry the seeds of violent authority. Loners need to be bossy. They quickly learn it’s the only method they have of shoving people off their backs.”

““I think Kathaos fears no divine forces.”
“Then he’s a brave man.”
“Oh, men make their own gods,” Yannul remarked. “I have a god with a fat belly, and a house full of expensive women to attend his every need, and I call him Yannul the Lan in Five Years from This.””

Part 3, Chapter 8 (p. 137)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

“Well now,” he said, “was I as good as you were when you were me?”

Book 3, “The Meteoric Hero” Chapter 9 (p. 117)
The Storm Lord (1976)

“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.”

Part 3, Chapter 11 (p. 152)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

“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.”

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

“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?”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

Tanith Lee book Don't Bite the Sun

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

“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)

“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)

“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.”

“This much poison cannot pour in one’s ears without it will leave some trace.”

Book Two, Part III “The Sorceress”, Chapter 3 (p. 316)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past.”

Book Two, Part III “The Sorceress”, Chapter 1 (p. 302)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“Destiny or gods or fortune—whatever one is pleased or innocent enough to call them—they seal men to their decree.”

Book Two, Part II “White Mountain”, Chapter 3 (p. 283)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“There is, too, a sort of relief in admitting defeat. Struggling to drag a mountain from my path, acknowledging at last the mountain would remain, lying down beneath the mountain, thankful for the shade of it.”

Book Two, Part I “In the Wilderness”, Chapter 2 (p. 240)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“The grape of truth is often bitter, but not to taste it in its season would be to waste the vine.”

Book Two, Part I “In the Wilderness”, Chapter 2 (p. 234)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“Far too soon a man is in his grave, and how small are the hurricanes and mountains of his life—vengeance, love, might, and conquest—compared to that tiny heap of bone dust at its end.”

Book One, Part IV “The Cloud”, Chapter 5 (p. 208)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“Nothing breaks more quickly than corroded steel.”

Book One, Part III “The Crimson Palace”, Chapter 6 (p. 160)
Quest for the White Witch (1978)