Quotes from Tanith Lee

Madness. I did not get myself born to die. I have better things to do.

How massively the mountains stand, while low to the ground the sand blows. The sand blows on and on. And then there are no mountains, none at all, the sand has kissed and whispered them away. And still, the sand blows on.

I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.

He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.

She could not mourn. She could no longer weep grasping the essence of annihilation, she wished only to cease, to be no more, as if sunk in some profound sleep devoid of wakening.

Though we come and go, and pass into the shadows, where we leave behind us stories told — on paper, on the wings of butterflies, on the wind, on the hearts of others — there we are remembered, there we work magic and great change — passing on the fire like a torch — forever and forever. Till the sky falls, and all things are flawless and need no words at all.

and their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

Would you like an interview for the drama, too?" "I can't act." "Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.

Live and let love. Love and let go. Go live.

He ached with weariness, but it became part of him; he scarcely noticed now that he was weary, he might always have been thus, it was so familiar to him.

Pale beauty stands aghast," he said, "at the vulgar ugliness of men.

I like writing about women, weak and strong, pathetic and heroic. I like writing about men, ditto. And all the variants of men and women, beasts and demons.

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.

I hardly ever work from a synopsis -- I find they act like chains.

I like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen.

No one is ever ordinary.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

I tend not to analyse my work, though I'm frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.