Tanith Lee Quotes

I don't think I'll write a large novel again because it was like being in jail for me. Even though that's the funniest book I've ever written, it was the saddest period of my life.

I don’t think any man writing can worry about what the act of writing costs him, even though at times he is very aware of it.

I can't go on flying apart just for those who want the benefit of a few verbal kicks. My God, do you know what poems like that cost? They're not written vicariously: they come out of actual suffering, real madness.

People don't realize what they have when they own a picture by me. Each picture is a phial with my blood. That is what has gone into it.

I do not so much write a book as sit up with it, as a dying friend. I hold its hand and hope it will get better.

Every one of my books had killed me a little more.

This is what art is all about. It is weaving fabric from the feathers you have plucked from your own breast. But no one must ever see the process - only the finished bolt of goods. They must never suspect that that crimson thread running through the pattern is blood.

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.

I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

Suffering is too strong a word, but writing is serious work. I pull the stuff up from me - it's not as if it's a pleasure.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

I always think that art is a form of sacrifice.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.

Songwriting, I have to take myself away from everybody to do. It's an unsightly act.

I've written some great things. That's a gift, but there's consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

Writing is much, much harder than taking pictures because you have to man-haul it all out of your insides.

I'm very personal with my music, and it takes a piece of your heart away every time you record that in the studio. So you only have so many pieces of your heart to give away.

It takes a lot of emotional high and struggles to write songs.

I have always found writing pleasant and don't understand what people mean by 'throes of creation.'

The desire to create literature leads to frights, grunts, and coy looks.

Poor artist! You gave away part of your soul when you painted the picture which you are now trying to dispose of.

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.

People who paint, including myself, get to a point where a bit of angst comes in. If you're doing it for a living, it's worth it to suffer those slings and arrows.