Quote

No one more cynical than an idealist.

Tanith Lee

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Idealist
Cynical

More quotes by Tanith Lee

Image
He sat by her, watching every gesture she made, as if he would paint her portrait afterward.
Tanith Lee
Image
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.
Tanith Lee
Image
I will draw you back to me. You shall see. By a chain of stars.
Tanith Lee
Image
We need the expressive arts, the ancient scribes, the storytellers, the priests.
Tanith Lee
Image
The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.
Tanith Lee
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Tanith Lee
Image
Im a devotee of Dracula, which was a pathfinder in horror and vampire fiction.
Tanith Lee
Image
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.
Tanith Lee
Image
It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence.
Tanith Lee
Image
It gets cold in the desert at night, particularly up in the mountains the stars hammer on the rock and strike frost.
Tanith Lee
Image
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
Image
Your dreams will betray you. Go nowhere on a horse that fades.
Tanith Lee
Image
When I started as a writer, I knew nothing about publishing-nothing about anything!
Tanith Lee
Image
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.
Tanith Lee
Image
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.
Tanith Lee
Image
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
Image
Hope is a punishable offense. The verdict is always death one more death of the heart.
Tanith Lee
Image
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.
Tanith Lee