The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales Quotes

“As I supposed,” said the raven, “your story is sad, sinister, and interesting.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“The only cold stone blossoms the garden had ever put forth were the towers themselves.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“The white queen lived in a pale tower, high in a shadowy garden. She lead been shut in there three days after the death of her husband, the king. Such a fate was traditional for certain of the royal widows. All about, between the dark verdures of the dark garden, there stared up similiar pale towers in which similiar white queens had for centuries been enmured. Most of the prisoners were by now deceased. Occasionally, travellers on the road beneath claimed to have glimpsed or to have thought that they glimpsed-a dim skeletal shape or two, in senile dissaray, peering blindly from the tall narrow windows, which were all the windows these towers possessed, over the heads of the trees, towards the distant spires of the city.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“I’ve come across rumours, here and there, of girls, men too, chosen to die, who escaped. But the fate stays on them. Hide them securely miles off, across water, beyond tall hills, still they feel the geas weigh like lead upon their souls. They kill themselves in the end, or go mad. And this girl, this Niemeh, you could see it in her.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“I remembered how in the legends it’s always the loveliest and the most gentle gets picked for the dragon’s dinner. You perceive the sense in the gentle part. A girl with a temper might start a ruckus.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“All mythology seems to take this tack somewhere, the dark against the light, the Final Battle. It’s rot, but there.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“It’s not a wonderful life, but it’s the only one I know.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Heaving a scented bluish vapour of sigh, the alien intelligence rose, and poured out two bowls of mhurlk, and left them there on the floor for his qatts.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Adorable Inglish-man,” he said. “I will tell you. In order to escape me, you must seek the monkey’s stagger.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Many have come to my home,” the demon went on, taking the empty cup from Edmund’s unresisting hand, “but none so alluring as yourself. I swear to you, there’s no need to be afraid of me. Or rather, not yet. When the sun goes down, admittedly, there is a change in my admirable nature.”

“In what way?” hiccupped Edmund, who felt rather improved by the wine.

“In this way,” murmured the demon, “that I shall rip the beauteous golden flesh from your sculptured ivory bones, tear the silver hair from your deliciously modeled skull…And so on.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“His cruel face was radiant with confidence and a wicked sort of tenderness as he smiled down at Edmund and stroked him. The nails of the stroking hand were long and pointed, and the seducer’s mouth almost, but not quite, concealed the two extended dog teeth, like sickle moons. Clearly, this was the demon.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“At the birth of Edmund, the second son, he had been dedicated to heroic adventure. An attractive child, even so young, he had nonetheless screamed with horror, as if he understood the life he was being saddled with. As he grew older, and the ghastly day drew closer when he must leave hearth and home, he had fallen prey to fainting fits. It wasn’t any use at all. Even as he lay in a swoon on his twenty-first birthday they had buckled on his sword and carried him carefully out on to the lawn of the family estate, next bolting the doors against him from inside.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Edmund, a hero, strode through the ripe green jungle-forest of Darzilla-Ny. Clad in link mail of the finest gold-washed bronze, on his hip a gold-hilted Darzillian scimitar, a selection of jeweled knives in various pouches and a frown of stern intent on his tanned and handsome face. Edmund was, nevertheless, plainly terrified. He had some cause to be.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“The wood was like a curtain or a tapestry. It was possible to thrust through it to its other side, but not to discover any substance to it.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Others looked at him, and he felt their eyes on him. This was because he was a stranger, but also because he was himself and there was a quality to him of the fire, or the moving light, a quality in fact curiously like that he had noted in the unicorn.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“He lay watching the moon, its light making his face into a bone in the black cavity of the wood.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“Here it is, here it approaches you, that which you require, that which for ever and ever you have pursued, not knowing it. The wellspring within yourself you cannot tap, the jewel in your mind you cannot uncover.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“The sight of the unicorn touched him and he resonated to the touch as the strings of the lutetin had resonated.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“All creative beings are capable of seeing in symbols, and each will seek analogy and omen, even while denying the fact.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales

“The first life, the young man who was called Lauro, became obsessed with those things that were unobtainable, and hungered for them with a mysterious, growing hunger.”
― Tanith Lee, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales