21 Quotes by Tanith Lee
- Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?
- Writers tell stories better, because they've had more practice, but everyone has a book in them. Yes, that old cliche.
- When I am fascinated by something, I like to play with it.
- The other writer who had a very important early influence on me when I was about 17 was C.S. Lewis.
- Pirates have always fascinated me.
- 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.
- No one is ever ordinary.
- 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 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've been criticised for writing in too complex a manner for younger people.
- Genre categories are irrelevant. I dislike them, but I do not have the casting vote.
- I think of myself as a storyteller, and that is it.
- 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.
- 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 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 like films, or some films, and would be intrigued to see my work on screen.
- 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 never know where I am going, though. That is part of what makes it so wonderful. And after all, who does?
- 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!
- As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.
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