179 Quotes by Tanith Lee

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

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

Despair, the worst of all the deadly sins, since it is denial of the self, of the god-in-self, since it is so seductive, like the snow-death, so warm. Ah, who would tear himself to pieces when he might lie down in such arms, in comfort, and cease. Bless you, my despair, my dear and loving despair. So painlessly you take my pain away. Oh Father, by no means dash the cup from my lips -

We all have our dreams. May we find them, and God have mercy on us when we do.

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

I held out my book. It was precious to me, as were all the things I'd written; even where I despised their inadequacy there was not one I would disown. Each tore its way from my entrails. Each had shortened my life, killed me with its own special little death.

What is reality after all," he said. "Did we not invent all this, are we not God, any and all of us?" He spread his own elegant hand on the table. "I could pass my hand through the wood as if through water. Any man, any woman, could do it. No chains, no bindings. It's a world of chaos restrained solely by the human mind, which then, afraid of itself, steps back and says, see this colossal machine over which I have no power at all.

I hate the way, once you start to know someone, care about them, their behavior can distress you, even when it's unreasonable and not your fault, even if you were really trying to be careful, tactful.

You, too, are a fool, earthborn, to trust in demon-kind and to ride on a mare of smoke and night. What demons love they slay in the end, and the gifts of demons are snares. Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.