Tanith Lee

And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.

It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.

When you fell in the sea, you should have heard them cheer. I made them rope the yard and fish you up. I said a ducking in water washes the witch-skill out of a woman until next full moon, and it would be bad luck to let you drown. How about that for a clever story? They’d believe anything if you make it sound silly enough.

A man hunted only for food or clothing or in self-defense. It was another mark of the effete and the sadistic to take life as a sport.

I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.

Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,

Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,

Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.

Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters.

White was the most fashionable color among the nobility and the rich. Because, of course, white is so easily dirtied, and only the wealthy would do little enough that it could not be spoiled.

“What do I care for the god?” the woman suddenly screamed, catching up her dead child. “What god is he that takes away my son and leaves me nothing?”

Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.

Spells are words, and words are merely noises. You are the sorceress, not your instruction. Don’t limit yourself.

We are the sum of our achievements, nothing more and nothing less. The mountain road which led us here was built by a dead people none of us would remember otherwise. What we create is the only part of us which can survive, or has the right to. Man is nothing, except to other men.