TANITH LEE QUOTES
British author (1947- )
It was so useful to lie with the truth.
TANITH LEE
The Silver Metal Lover
I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.
TANITH LEE
The Silver Metal Lover
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.
TANITH LEE
Mortal Suns
I will pay you in trouble and terror.
TANITH LEE
The Castle of Dark
Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clichéd dark and stormy night, I found the magical inn, its windows golden lit, and Summer was due to start tomorrow. I can only work at one thing well. Deprive me of that, and my "back-up plan," even now, will be the empty, stormy, darkened heath -- where, incidentally, even unpublished, somehow I'll still be writing.
TANITH LEE
interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show
When I write, I go to live inside the book. By which I mean, mentally I can experience everything I'm writing about. I can see it, hear its sounds, feel its heat or rain. The characters become better known to me than the closest family or friends. This makes the writing-down part very simple most of the time. I only need to describe what's already there in front of me. That said, it won't be a surprise if I add that the imagined worlds quickly become entangled with the so-called reality of this one. Since I write almost every day, and I think (and dream) constantly about my work, it occurs to me I must spend more time in all these places than here.
TANITH LEE
author's note, Wolf Tower
Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.
TANITH LEE
Wolf Queen
You should visit before you pass judgment on a place.
TANITH LEE
The Castle of Dark
We all have our dreams. May we find them, and God have mercy on us when we do.
TANITH LEE
The Book of the Dead
If I ever get to 100, I'd want to be filled with wonder and wild, adolescent, wide-eyed interest in newness. So let's keep the flame burning. Let's stop thinking everyone over 29, or 49, has to be reinforced by concrete.
TANITH LEE
interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show
Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.
TANITH LEE
Sabella
The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.
TANITH LEE
interview, Nightmare Magazine, February 2014
I must suppose that reading wonderful writers may, inadvertently, teach an avid reader a great deal -- not only about life and other matters, but about how to write. Therefore doubtless I have benefited from frequent immersions in the glowing genius of others. It would be nice to think so. (I do actually think so). But to improve my skills will never be the prompting force of my reading -- that's just literary lust.
TANITH LEE
interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show
Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor.
TANITH LEE
Death's Master
For me, everyone I write of is real. I have little true say in what they want, what they do or end up as (or in). Their acts appall, enchant, disgust or astound me. Their ends fill me with retributive glee, or break my heart. I can only take credit (if I can even take credit for that) in reporting the scenario. This is not a disclaimer. Just a fact.
TANITH LEE
interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009
World's flying like birds; my car's in flight. The city lights are spattered on my windshield like the fragments of the night. And I'm in flight. The sky's a wheel, a merry-go-round of wings and snow and steel, and fire. We'll tread the sky, we'll ride the scarlet horses.
TANITH LEE
The Silver Metal Lover
Some writers, of course, simply write, as they feel they are driven to do, by outer/inner inspirations. If, after the work is written and, hopefully, published, others respond -- that is the Champagne. But we, or some of us, don't write for the Champagne. We write because we write.
TANITH LEE
interview, Intergalactic Medicine Show
I am interested in most mythology. Celtic or Christian no more than anything else. I will admit to a pleasure and sense of hope in what I see as the basic teachings of Christ, stripped of the nonsense that has sometimes been accumulated about them and the embarrassing misunderstanding.
TANITH LEE
Tabula Rasa, October 1994
I hardly ever work from a synopsis -- I find they act like chains.
TANITH LEE
Realms of Fantasy, August 2009
Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.
TANITH LEE
Night's Master