Quote

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.

Tanith Lee

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Tanith Lee
Age: 67 †
Born: 1947
Born: September 19
Died: 2015
Died: May 24
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
London
England
Esther Garber
Judas Garbah
Would
Knowledge
Bitterness
Lying
Season
Lasts
Seasons
Last
Merely
Cannot
Lies
Become
Habit
Certain
Beyond
Even
Joy
Mortality

More quotes by Tanith Lee

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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.
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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.
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I haven't changed. Something's happened to me, that's all.
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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.
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The humble were the elect of God. Did not the priests teach so, in their gemmed, kingly robes, from their towering pulpits?
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Maidens who stay maidens turn into saints. Old women become sorceresses. Tough jobs, both of these.
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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.
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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.
Tanith Lee
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The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.
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Are not all loves secretly the same? A hundred flowers sprung from a single root.
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I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.
Tanith Lee
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Im a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction.
Tanith Lee
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He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.
Tanith Lee
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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
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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.
Tanith Lee
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No one is ever ordinary.
Tanith Lee
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The worst vulgarity is to avoid vulgarity solely on the grounds that it is vulgar.
Tanith Lee
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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
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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.
Tanith Lee
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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