Quotes from Tanith Lee

Come off the wall, for God's sake. Why break your neck?" "Ah, do you love me so well?" "I love you well, you fool. Not well enough to pay for your funeral, and how should poverty-stricken Estemba afford it?" "Romulan, my good angel, I suppose we would have to steal the money from some hapless one, as Montargo always does.

Flavian Estemba, generally called "Mercurio" by those who knew him, stared toward the street, feigned vertigo, swayed first forward over the drop, next back, and so gracefully and bonelessly fell into the garden, and into the arms of Romulan, who, with a curse, caught him.

The aloof Rosalena at his side had half shut her eyes, gazing through the lashes at Mercurio as he sang.

To be nineteen and feel such a weight of time was curious.

Death had been love's price.

All he has conveyed was disapproval, the stone spire of the Montargo tower.

He gave his habitual impression, that he was prepared to have everything, anyone, unless they hastened to keep up. That impression in Romulan's case might be false.

The towers seemed all alive in this moment, like serpents risen on their tails, pitilessly intent. Who, with their antique hatreds, would they venemously bite and devour tonight?

Cyrion glanced at the scout, and smiled at him with appalling charm.

The innkeeper told me there had been wasp, buzzing about." "Buzzing?" "Buzz, buzz, my dear. You bribed one of Estemba's servants, I presume to learn my destination. Then came here and sat on a wall till you knew our business." "Something of that, more or less.

The wonderful voice did not soothe her. It penetrated to every artery, pierced, injured her. She surrendered herself to the unfathomable pain of incorporeal things.

The ghastly facade of the Basilica loomed over them. Bronze angles above the doors troubled Romulan; as they had always troubled him. He did not understand why; perhaps he had heeded, unaware, some frightening resemblance to himself.

The eyes themselves drifted open, closed, open, and the face, turned slowly to Valentius, smiled at him. It was a smile of marvelous sweetness, like a child's, trusting and happy and at peace, for Romulan was clearly not yet fully aware. The father received the smile with a deep personal sadness, already assured it was not for him.

Like the child she was, fallen hard as she had, she was as yet too stunned to lament.

The last notes dripped from the mandolin and melted like magic coinage into nothing. The nothing contained the hall, the limbo that was blind as Cupid, did not breathe, held to its own fancies, its own hidden wants and musings.

Ah, let the poor man have her for the dance. The measure will part them often enough. And a Mercurio consumed by hopeless love is a rare vision for the rest of us.

I have come back into the desert in sore need of the disciplines I once learned here, things which fail me from lack of practice.

Leopardo was so tickled by this fiendish bit of fortune, he did not know what to do with it.

She had set her hand on Leopardo's bowed head and allowed herself a moment with the mass of apricot hair that felt like crisp wild grass to her.

What I told you, and what is true, may not be one and the same." "You do delight me. The thought of engineering more rumors seemed unexciting, not to say heavy-handed.

His voice quivered; it had the harp-string note to it that belongs to some intense emotion of which the victim is himself uncertain, or at which he is in disorder. But it was a voice that meant to demand blood.

The old man drank Ysemid's wine, savouring it as if it were the blood of a foe, which like the demons, the nomads of ancient days had sometimes swallowed.

Without Karuil-Ysem, I should be less than I am.

The magic time when the first fires of the evening were lighted was long past, the bread and spoons were on the table, and the dishes laid out in their proper places for the house demons.