"I would be a drudge now, among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god."
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Awards, the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. She also wrote a children's picture book, and many poems. She wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction series Blake's 7.
"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."
"I know the old ways. There’s nothing evil there, only strange, and not even strange when you know it."
"Wealth, or large amounts of possessions seemed to him limiting. They brought their own prison with them. He preferred, since he had once known a kind of prison, to travel free."
"Odd, how different different men’s fears could be."
"Spells are words, and words are merely noises. You are the sorceress, not your instruction. Don’t limit yourself."
"He had been too near the hard facts of religions as a child to find it soothing."