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Quotes from Quest for the White Witch — Tanith Lee

1947–2015 England

← All quotes by Tanith Lee

24 quotes

The grape of truth is often bitter, but not to taste it in its season would be to waste the vine.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Destiny or gods or fortune—whatever one is pleased or innocent enough to call them—they seal men to their decree.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Power is the wine after which all other wine is mud.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Nothing breaks more quickly than corroded steel.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

The absolute, as I had finally been shown, does not need the accompaniment of pipes and drums.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

I had made vows and to spare, but the present cannot be ruled forever by the past.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

This much poison cannot pour in one’s ears without it will leave some trace.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Such is the civilizing effect of city life upon men. It kills the instincts and replaces them with extended noses.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

The plague came to be called Yellow Mantle. Men must name everything, as if, by giving it a name, they will decrease the nameless horror they experience.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Far too soon a man is in his grave, and how small are the hurricanes and mountains of his life—vengeance, love, might, and conquest—compared to that tiny heap of bone dust at its end.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

A tomb contains the dead, who are properly immobile and unspeaking. Though Masrians leave lamps for the ghosts, nobody expects they will be lighted.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

He said quietly, “I see a jackal running. His name is I remember.”

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“Why aid me?”
“God has moved me to help you. Or, if you prefer, it was my reasonless inclination to do so.”

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

“Some god must be laughing somewhere.”
“Some god is always laughing. That is, if you believe in them, which is surely enough to make them laugh.”

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

The antithesis of myself. No fervor in him, no greed for life, only his ruthless craving to possess, which took no pleasure in possession.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

I have seen women who thought they loved me look at me that way, and wolves which were hungry.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Westward and inland there was a form of government, some prince or other sitting on his backside ordering this or that.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

At that, I understood for sure I must not lose her, for the earth is not the earth without some light to see it by, and she was mine.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

I found a glimmering brown skull in the snow. I could not tell if it was mortal or god, and there seemed a sobering moral in that.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

I had a rare wine in my blood. Expiation was over, guilt washed out, terror canceled.

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Tanith Lee (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.