Tanith Lee quotes:

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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.

She was what an aristocrat should be, porcelain and silk, unreachable, gracious, untainted by the dust of all this common death.

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.

The guilty are always the most prone to establish complementary guilt, and the most unforgiving thereafter.

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.

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.

and their days make no story for they were good and joyful and without event

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

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

Pirates have always fascinated me.

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.

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

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

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

Condemned and executioner are not coupled in a primitive rite.

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

Ecstasy and vulnerability belonged in the same dish. The fear the cup would be snatched away was what gave the wine its savor.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

I began to feel lighthearted. Don't ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.

I came up with a parallel Venice called Venus. set in a parallel Venice about 1701.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

If you run away from trouble, it always follows.

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

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

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

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.

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

It was so useful to lie with the truth.

It's lovely. I hate it.

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

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

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

Never be afraid of a cliché, if it expresses what you wish to say.

No one is ever ordinary.

No one more cynical than an idealist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tales of heroes end in bliss.

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

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

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

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

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

The soul is a magician. Only living flesh hampers it.

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

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.

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

Whatever the hell I am, I am Me.

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

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

You should visit before you pass judgment on a place.