Quotes from Tanith Lee

It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Pirates have always fascinated me.

People are always the start for me... animals, when I can get into their heads, gods, supernatural beings, immortals, the dead... these are all people to me.

The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that is cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.

The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.

Im writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and Im very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.

Oh, love. Love is best of all. There is no such total element, not even pain. Who has ever loved, knows this. I need not say more.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

It was so useful to lie with the truth.

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

The guilty are always the most prone to establish complementary guilt, and the most unforgiving thereafter.

The Vazdru do not weep. Who weeps? Not I. Every word spoken was a tear.

She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death.

It was the forest's fault. Those two handsome woodcutters. An evil place, the forest, everyone knew it, full of temptations and imps...

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

It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains; the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.

Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine

She did this not out of fear of him, but out of pity. Because she had come to see the ultimate terrible truth behind all others. Which was that the stupidity and avarice and hatred of mankind had finally begun to make him also stupid, avaricious, hating, and cruel beyond reason. Even though he was a god, a god of love.