Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotations

My husband and I were very in love, and I had no reason to suspect that his interests lay anywhere else.

He used to sit on my lap. I was sort of ambivalent about that. He was surviving any way he could.

The scandal's so unbelievable that I cannot repeat it here.

It has never been, and never will be easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

I do tend to lose track since the kids are out of school.

All the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world...

But this is my truth; I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

Morgaine laughed and mocked, but when it was a real trouble, no one could be kinder.

Knowledge was like a mouthful of dust.

I should know, for I am Morgaine le Fay, priestess of the Isle of Avalon, where the ancient religion of the Mother Goddess is born.

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?

A friend of ours has a hobby doing genealogy, and we found out that we were cousins in the ninth degree, that we had a common ancestor on the Mayflower.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?

What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do with as you will.

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever

The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.

I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

Lancelot: Morgaine, Morgaine - kinswoman, I have never seen you weep. Morgaine: Are you like so many men, afraid of a woman's tears? (...) Lancelot: No (...) it makes them seem so much more real, so much more vulnerable - women who never weep frighten me, because I know they are stronger than I, and I am always a little afraid of what they will do.

No man or woman can live another's fate

And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea.

Never name the well from which you will not drink.

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

I have neither talent or taste for kingship, cousin. I am a warrior, and to dwell always in one place and live at court would weary me to death!

Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

Of all things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so.

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

On one occasion I shared a bed with about seven other people, but we were all having a party overnight

The visible world was only an imperfect reflection of the Ideal, which the Philosopher sought to transcend.

... but I believe the divine ones will send other great masters to preach the truth to mankind, and that mankind will always receive them with the cross and the fire and the stones

I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!

A babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain.

A woman is never free to bear a child unless she is also free to abort it.

Flowers and fruit are only the beginning. In the seed lies the life and the future.

One of the earliest lessons I learned was not to read my reviews. Weigh them.

Light flared through every limb, a force far too great to be contained in any human frame; but for that moment she was the Great Mother, giving birth to the world.

The truth is not so good a story.

From these Christians who came to [Avalon] to escape the bigotry of their own kind I learned something, at last, of the Nazarene, the carpenter's son who had attained Godhead in his own life and preached a rule of tolerance; and so I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.

Speak not against anyone whose burden you have not weighed yourself.

If you listen to dogs barking you will go deaf without learning anything.

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex

I never thought that I was very intelligent

For there is no higher religion than the Truth.

I've been a schoolteacher. I always try to get the kids to finish talking before the next one starts

[T]he House of Maidens was for little girls whose whole duty in life was to spill things, break things, and forget things . . . until they had spilled, broken, and forgotten everything they could, and thus made room in their lives for a little wisdom.

A priestess of Avalon does not lie. But I am cast out of Avalon, and for this, and unless it is all to be for nothing, I must lie, and lie well and quickly

Arthur, their young king, like a hero out of legend.

If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it...

There's no "magic secret"; writing is like everything else; ten percent inspiration or talent, and ninety percent hard work. Persistence; keeping at it till you get there. As Agnes de Mille said, it means working every day—bored, tired, weary, or with a fever of a hundred and two.

I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.' The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference...

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.

All gods are one god.

Darling, I wish I could help you. Try to remember this: to live, you need every experience. Some will come in glory and in beauty, and some in pain and what seems like ugliness. But - they are. Life consists of opposites in balance.

If you would have the message of the gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats ... It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.

Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

Without a dream to light your way, the word is a very dark place.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you.

I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here.

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!

Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

Love is the only prayer I know.

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.