Tanith Lee Quotations

I just love writing. It's magical, it's somewhere else to go, it's somewhere much more dreadful, somewhere much more exciting. Somewhere I feel I belong, possibly more than in the so-called real world.

I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault.

At an early school, when I was about 5, they asked what we wanted to be when we grew up. Everyone said silly things, and I said I wanted to be an actress. So that was what I wanted to be, but what I was, of course, was a writer.

People are always the start for me... animals, when I can get into their heads, gods, supernatural beings, immortals, the dead... these are all people to me.

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and nonfiction. And even there, who can be sure?

I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?

The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.

Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.

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.

If they had said my writing wasn't good enough, fair enough, that's an opinion. But to say it's too complex is to insult the intelligence of the so-called young.

I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.

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.

I'm writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and I'm very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

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

Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.

I also love Disney, and will defend doing so, because there's so much in those films and I don't care if it's stereotyped.

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

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

It's very selfish when I write. I'm not aware, ever, of writing for another person; I'm not even really aware of writing for myself.

When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.

My interest in reincarnation... I explored in a number of works.

I don't have specific aims. Only to keep writing. I need more time, as I said, perhaps 25 hours in a day would be helpful.

But all lives are important, all people are important, because everyone is a book. Some people just have easier access to it.

I have been approached several times by the movie industry, who have sometimes taken out options on my work. So far nothing has come of any of this.

What I like about vampires is what I like about everything I want to write about, the depths and heights, the pain and joy. Life.

There are the characters who die but who you follow after death, and they often lead much more interesting lives after they are dead! So the characters usually drive me along, but occasionally the plot has to come first. It can get sticky.

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.

My parents were dancers, and we traveled around a lot, so I went to some very ropy schools where I learned a lot about being bullied and not a great deal about anything else.

Locality is, in my case, unimportant. My mind and heart go where they wish.

Usually the characters lead, but sometimes you have such a strong theme that... they won't let you.

We used to go to the cinema once or twice a week, and they used to preview X-certificate films-those which children couldn't see-and I was terrified, and used to have nightmares just from the previews.

I started a version of my French historical novel... I found it utterly fascinating.

I used to work all hours of day and night, but changes in my life and physical stamina have meant that now I rarely work so long as I did-4 in the morning was a reasonable time to me, for finishing up. That isn't in my range any more.

I've also written a big fantasy, very much the sort of thing I used to write, set in kind of a Greek world, though with a lot of differences.

I used to throw away my holograph manuscripts after I'd typed them, but I'm keeping a lot of them now, because obviously, at 50, I'm starting to think, if anyone ever is interested in me after I'm dead, they can look and see.

An editor suggested to me I might try contemporary horror. At first this didn't appeal-then the idea arrived.

I've got a couple of science fiction ideas that I want to do, both quite harsh - and possibly quite funny. And not like anything I've done so far. But I'm never entirely sure what I'm going to do. It's always a surprise to me.

I've written two books set in India... In the mid-'80s, I just fell for India, and it was like a love affair. I was obsessed with it. I read a few things, and looked at films, and it was as though I was more there than in England, where I was writing! This always happens to me, and it's magical.

Once I could read, I think writing followed very quickly; I was able to put down my words and letters... So there's just over a year between my learning to read and beginning to write.

In my 20s some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was 27 before my adult novel... was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer.

I couldn't believe someone had produced literature that was like an entirely new language, beautiful stuff. Graham Greene, everything. William Golding.

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

I simply write what I want, wish, long to write.... The state of human life and the god or demon within. The constant internal war that being alive can conjure.

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.

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.

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.

Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death; one more death of the heart.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

Pirates have always fascinated me.

I was reading some complex books in my own youth-and no, I didnt always understand every word, let alone every concept-but I got the main thrust, which was like a lifeline in a fluctuating world.

Im a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction.

Im writing what comes into my head, or through me, or from somewhere else, and it is the most extraordinary, exciting thing. I love it, and Im very greedy, and I really enjoy it!

When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!

People are always the start for meanimals. When I can get into their heads, gods, supernatural beings,immortals, the deadthese are all people to me.

The dictate of the light says: Know yourself and what you are. The dark replies, By all means, but then become afraid.

Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.

It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains; the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.

There was no violence, no speed. It moved to the rhythm of an elder dance, putting all the rituals of the world to shame. Black, silver, gold and moon-opal, night and sea, fire, earth, air and water.

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

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.

Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.

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.

A rose by any other name Would get the blame For being what it is-- The colour of a kiss, The shadow of a flame. A rose may earn another name, So call it love; So call it love I will, And love is like the sea, Which changes constantly, And yet is still The same.

She looked, and a scarlet butterfly flew away from her, away down the length of the tower, and then another, another, an unraveling scarf of butterflies like winged blood.

Go nowhere on a horse that fades, for your dreams will betray you.

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.' Rather my impression, too. Though that never stopped me trying.

Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

It's lovely. I hate it.

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

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.

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

It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.

I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

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.

Robespierre, crippled and blind, has yet to be healed to the knowledge that service - his desire - is a deed of savage-speaking gentleness, not soft-spoken savagery.

In the usual way 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. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does.

If anyone ever wonders why there's nothing coming from me, it's not my fault. I'm doing the work. No, I haven't deteriorated or gone insane. Suddenly, I just can't get anything into print. And apparently I'm not alone in this. There are people of very high standing, authors who are having problems. So I have been told. In my own case, the more disturbing element is the editor-in-chief who said to me, "I think this book is terrific. It ought to be in print. I can't publish it -- I've been told I mustn't." The indication is that I'm not writing what people want to read, but I never did.

Flat or round, there has always been hate in the world.

Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.

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.

The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.

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.

Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.

Now, writing every day, and being paid for it and encouraged to do it, it was as if, in the midst of the clich?d 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.

In the greater part of humankind there resides an instinct for survival. It is this which can clutch at straws and effect a rescue from them. It is this which can, now and then, outwit fate.

Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine.

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.

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

Tales of heroes end in bliss.

You should visit before you pass judgment on a place.

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.

The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.

No one is ever ordinary.

The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?

Archetypes are universal, and, in subtle or extravagant ways, interchangeable.

I was born in North London in 1947. I didn't learn to read until I was almost 8-partly bad schooling, and partly I suspect slight dyslexic problems. My father, driven mad by this, taught me to read. At 9 I began writing.