Tanith Lee

Nothing can be learned without some measure of risk, and, more vital still, of patience.

Self-love is neither fantasy nor vulgar joke. The totality of the “I,” the inbuilt survival and self-protective trait, is one of the most unshakable syndromes known to psycho-science.

In our place, we can hardly go backward, but neither should we ignore the nakedness of humanity before the huge-wheeled vehicle of progress. We have too much to give, and far too much to learn, to throw ourselves away.

But among the aristocrats whose existence could be lengthily prolonged into three or four hundred spans, boredom came to be the killer, a bizarre running down, a sort of decline and decay, nonphysical but fatal.

The harshest lesson of all was that which ran contrary to the teaching of his own personality.

Like many a longed-for gift, it was, in possession, unwelcome.

She had no reason not to believe in the impossible. Desperation was always ready to pray for miracles.

Fashions change. Even in mythology.

The demons had invented love. There needs to be said no more.

And in the manner of this ideal we strive, though even that not too onerously. For piety itself may be used to make a chain about the soul.

“Your beauty leaves me breathless,” said Pereban.

“Yet you find the breath to say so.”

Of the rest, nothing further is said, save that lovers love and live and, in due season, as all men must, they also die. And so with Ezail and Chavir who had been Sovaz and Oloru, Azhriaz and Chuz. For such was and is mortal life, mortal death. But for love, who can predict or measure, plot, ascribe, or declare an end. Love is one of the immortals.