Tanith Lee Quotes (42 Quotes)

My interest in reincarnation... I explored in a number of works.

There are the characters who die but who you follow after death, and they often lead much more interesting lives after they are dead So the characters usually drive me along, but occasionally the plot has to come first. It can get sticky.

My parents were dancers, and we traveled around a lot, so I went to some very ropy schools where I learned a lot about being bullied and not a great deal about 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.

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

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

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.

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

What I like about vampires is what I like about everything I want to write about, the depths and heights, the pain and joy. Life.

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

Locality is, in my case, unimportant. My mind and heart go where they wish.

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.

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.

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.

Rachmaninov had an endless influence on me.

No one is ever ordinary.

I don't have specific aims. Only to keep writing. I need more time, as I said, perhaps 25 hours in a day would be helpful.

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

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.

I love all types of music, but classical music particularly has had an enormous influence on my writing, and some pieces have directly inspired a book. Shostakovich's Symphony Number 5 was a direct influence.

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.

Pirates have always fascinated me.

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!

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

I couldn't believe someone had produced literature that was like an entirely new language, beautiful stuff. Graham Greene, everything. William Golding.

Once I could read, I think writing followed very quickly I was able to put down my words and letters... So there's just over a year between my learning to read and beginning to write.

We used to go to the cinema once or twice a week, and they used to preview X-certificate films-those which children couldn't see-and I was terrified, and used to have nightmares just from the previews.

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

I've written two books set in India... In the mid-'80s, I just fell for India, and it was like a love affair. I was obsessed with it. I read a few things, and looked at films, and it was as though I was more there than in England, where I was writing This always happens to me, and it's magical.

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.

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

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.

I have been approached several times by the movie industry, who have sometimes taken out options on my work. So far nothing has come of any of this.

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

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.

I used to work all hours of day and night, but changes in my life and physical stamina have meant that now I rarely work so long as I did-4 in the morning was a reasonable time to me, for finishing up. That isn't in my range any more.

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.

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

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

But all lives are important, all people are important, because everyone is a book. Some people just have easier access to it.

In my 20s some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was 27 before my adult novel... 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.