Quotes from Tanith Lee

From the things that get told, I would prefer not to know him any better.

Every sweet thing I see reminds me of some other thing, which is bitter.

In the midst of passion, some previous passion still held some sway, it seemed.

Strings and blades are your domain, Mercurio. We'll prevail on your for a song.

Well," she remarked, "if I cannot have one, there is the other to be had." "There's my sensible poppy and my wise rose." "Or there is death.

Prophets had come from the desert, radiant, beautiful and terrible. Prophets and demons.

All at once she saw a young man bound on a wheel of iron; his hair was black, his white body marbed with purple wounds, and his face forever empty.

Sameness is a fearsome thing.

Seeing the bed, the crimson and eboy and golden canopy looped up over it, the covers spilled about, and her whiteness glowing against them as she approached, Leopardo knew a moment's utter and uncomprehending horror.

There were no windows in the stone room, but light came from a tasteful arrangement of seven human skulls hung from the ceiling on an iron chain with candles burning in them. There was also a low fire buzzing on an open hearth. In its sombre red glare, less bright yet more widespread and descriptive than the glow of the skull lamps, unknown objects winked on the walls-bone things, metal things-and symbols drawn there in yellow and white clay seemed to dart, disintegrate and reassamble.

Explicit sin was sweeter than mere carnality.

You may glamorize snakes from the ears of King Malban and you will hear nothing from me but polite applause.

Dear Heaven," said Mercurio, leaning out, "a lunatic is in the garden." "A lunatic is also in the house," Romulan called back at the same quiet carrying pitch. "Shall we compare delusions?

His eagerness to hate had brought Leopardo a certain reputation among swordsmen, and four cruel scars on his smooth body.

If the watchers in the city had remarked that Cyrion was as handsome as the Arch-Demon himself, they would not have been the first to do so.

Leadenly he sank down on her again, his face in Chenti's pillow, his body slack, weakened as never before, in a deathlike speechless aftermath where thought ran all too free.

It came to him to wonder, though only for a second, why the mercurial Mercurio kept about him such a symbol of order and changeless.

Silent they were, and clad in black, the men and the women; even the children. And their faces were all the same, and gazed at Cyrion in the same way. They gazed at him as if he were the last bright day in their lives, the last bright coin in the otherwise empty coffer.

The devilish qualities, not always limited to masks, were awake and stirring.

Romulan laughed, showing teeth as beautiful as the rest of him.

The sense of his dynamic importance to them was so strong that Cyrion swept the crowd a low, half-mocking bow.

Why is it," cried the young woman in obvious chagrin, "everyone believes a plain girl will leap at the first man who wants her?

His face, which Romulan could not see, was enigmatic and unreadable. At such moments, Mercurio was at his most transparent, for enigma was his mask, as was frivolity. One might look closely and perceive trouble somewhere in the eyes, and some conceit of age. He was twenty-two, his spirit far older. And this spirit with a sure psychic awareness, had now tensed with him.

Cornelia had bemoaned the lack of hair or nail-clipping, even of blood. A notion that she had been close enough to the delicious boy to get all three-biting a piece of him perhaps (God overlook her wickedness), made her effervesce with merriment.