Tanith Lee Quotes
"Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?"
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Fiction, Writing)
"Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Old, Practice, Writers)
"When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Play)
"The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Influence, Writer)
"Pirates have always fascinated me."
- Tanith Lee
"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."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: People, Gods, Animals, Supernatural)
"No one is ever ordinary."
- Tanith Lee
"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
(Related: Writing)
"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
(Related: Intelligence, Insult, Opinion, Writing)
"I've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: People, Writing)
"Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Vote)
"I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it."
- Tanith Lee
"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
(Related: School, Silly, Writer)
"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."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Love, Care, Disney, Will)
"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
(Related: Love, World, Writing)
"I like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Work)
"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
(Related: Men, Women, Writing)
"I love writers all across the board, but one who influenced me very directly at the beginning was Mary Renault."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Love, Beginning, Writers)
"I never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?"
- Tanith Lee
"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!"
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Love, Writing)
"As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Mother, Invention)