American author (1930-1999)
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.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Forest House
Love is the only prayer I know.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling?
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
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.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
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.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Marion Zimmer Bradley's Ancestors of Avalon
Men destroy only what they fear.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Climbing Wave
There has to be something wrong with a system that means you can take guilt on and off like an overcoat.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Darkover Landfall
A trail without beginning has no end.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Door Through Space
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.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Fall of Atlantis
All the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
attributed, The Faces of Science Fiction
Every human being needs to believe in the goodness of some power that created him, no matter what he calls it, and some religious or ethical structure. But I don't think we need sacraments or priesthoods from a world that's only a memory, and won't even be that to our children and our children's children. Ethics, yes. Art, yes. Music, crafts, knowledge, humanity--yes. But not rituals which will quickly dwindle down into superstitions. And certainly not a social code or a set of purely arbitrary behavioral attitudes which have nothing to do with the society we are in now.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Darkover Landfall
The man who feels fear without cause is a fool; but the man is twice a fool who does not feel fear when there is cause.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Hunters of the Red Moon
For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
Anyone who intrigues for power, deserves to get it!
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
Darkover Landfall
Perhaps mankind must have a time of darkness so that we will one day again know what a blessing is the light.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Forest House
If you seek to avoid your fate or to delay suffering, it only condemns you to suffer it redoubled in another life.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
The Mists of Avalon
A story with no moral isn't worth writing; a story with no plot isn't worth reading. And if people get your point before they get your story, you are to hire a soapbox instead.
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY
introduction, Hawk's Hill