British author (1947- )
Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.
TANITH LEE
Delirium's Mistress
It's lovely. I hate it.
TANITH LEE
Wolf Queen
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.
TANITH LEE
Delusion's Master
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.
TANITH LEE
interview, Innsmouth Free Press, November 17, 2009
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.
TANITH LEE
Tabula Rasa, October 1994
I tend not to analyse my work, though I'm frequently intrigued when other people take time to do so.
TANITH LEE
interview, Nightmare Magazine, February 2014
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.
TANITH LEE
Wolf Star
And their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event.
TANITH LEE
Night's Master
We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests. And that's where I put myself: as a storyteller. Not necessarily a high priestess, but certainly the storyteller. And I would love to be the storyteller of the tribe.
TANITH LEE
"Love & Death & Publishers", Locus Magazine, April 1998
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.
TANITH LEE
"A House on Fire", Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead
If you run away from trouble, it always follows.
TANITH LEE
Wolf Tower
Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.
TANITH LEE
Delirium's Mistress
Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.
TANITH LEE
The Silver Metal Lover
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.
TANITH LEE
Tabula Rasa, October 1994
The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.
TANITH LEE
The Silver Metal Lover
Tales of heroes end in bliss.
TANITH LEE
Mortal Suns
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.
TANITH LEE
The Book of the Damned
She had always been far too afraid of losing her husband, or more properly, the financial parasol North had maintained over her head.
TANITH LEE
"A House on Fire", Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead
Often misunderstood, Dionysus is far more than a wine deity. He is the Breaker of Chains, who rescues not only the flesh but the heart and spirit from too much of worldly regulations and duties. He is a god of joy and freedom. Any uncultivated, tangled, and primal woodland is very much his domain.
TANITH LEE
The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest
Danger and anger are everywhere. Love is the rarity, the gem buried in the core of the mine, the outpost of God.
TANITH LEE
Metallic Love