Quotes from book
The Birthgrave

The Birthgrave

The Birthgrave is a 1975 science fantasy novel by British author Tanith Lee. The novel was Lee's first published novel for adults, and also the first novel in The Birthgrave Trilogy. Inspired by Lee's own personal dreams from her early twenties, the story follows a nameless protagonist through various towns on a journey to discover who she really is and what she is capable of. The Birthgrave received mostly positive reviews and was nominated for the 1975 Nebula Award for best novel.

“I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part IV “War March”, Chapter 3 (p. 246)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 2 (p. 151)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part III “The Dark City”, Chapter 2 (p. 191)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

The Birthgrave (1975)
Source: Book Two, Part V “Tower-Eshkorek”, Chapter 3 (p. 303)

“I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the book were blank.
Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them…
It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 357)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Now you understand,” Rarm said to me. “It was the last cut against yourself to become convinced of your own hideousness. You held to it and nurtured it, and even identified with the devil goddess of Orash in your determination to be accursed. And it never occurred to you that perhaps you saw a false image under the mountain.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 5 (p. 405)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part III “The Dark City”, Chapter 3 (p. 200)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part I “Snake’s Road”, Chapter 2 (p. 323)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part IV “War March”, Chapter 7 (p. 268)
The Birthgrave (1975)

““What do I care for the god?” the woman suddenly screamed, catching up her dead child. “What god is he that takes away my son and leaves me nothing?””

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

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

““When will they fight?” I asked.
“Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man’s work.”
I laughed. “I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men.””

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part I “Snake’s Road”, Chapter 3 (p. 333)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book One, Part IV “Ankurum”, Chapter 5 (p. 108)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Uasti was a good teacher,” he said. “She made you look a little way into yourself, see what you could become.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 5 (p. 402)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Don’t judge yourself,” he said. “None of us are ever good at it.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 5 (p. 402)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

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