Quotes on Tales

And Death spoke to them —’” “Sorry,” interjected Harry, “but Death spoke to them?” “It’s a fairy tale, Harry!” “Right, sorry. Go on.

We have been poisoned by fairy tales.

With 'Stardust', I hope what I was doing is giving 30-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 60-year-olds a chance to get the same sense of wonder, the same feeling, the same magic, that they got in reading the classic fairy tales as children.

For most of human history, 'literature,' both fiction and poetry, has been narrated, not written — heard, not read. So fairy tales, folk tales, stories from the oral tradition, are all of them the most vital connection we have with the imaginations of the ordinary men and women whose labor created our world.

Our tree became the talking tree of the fairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches.

I was young, and by instinct of self-preservation I had to collect my energy on something, if I were not to be whirled away with the dusk on the farm-roads, or the smoke on the plain. I begun in the evenings to write stories, fairy-tales, and romances, that would take my mind a long way off, to other countries and times.

Very often, I confess, the teller of dreams bores me. His dream could perhaps interest me if it were frankly worked on. But to hear a glorious tale of his insanity! I have not yet clarified, psychoanalytically, this boredom during the recital of other people's dreams. Perhaps I have retained the stiffness of a rationalist. I do not follow the tale of justified incoherence docilely. I always suspect that part of the stupidities being recounted are invented.

The film drama is the opium of the people…down with bourgeois fairy-tale scenarios…long live life as it is!

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.

They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale. We should not allow it to be believed that all scientific progress can be reduced to mechanisms, machines, gearings, even though such machinery has its own beauty.

Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

In a utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected.

I have no illusions concerning the precarious status of my tales and do not expect to become a serious competitor of my favorite weird authors.

Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.

Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.

I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.

Child of the pure unclouded brow _x000D_ And dreaming eyes of wonder! _x000D_ Though time be fleet, and I and thou _x000D_ Are half a life asunder, _x000D_ Thy loving smile will surely hail _x000D_ The love-gift of a fairy-tale.

The unblemished ideal exists only in happily-ever-after fairy tales. Ruth likes to say, "If two people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary." The sooner we accept that as a fact of life, the better we will be able to adjust to each other and enjoy togetherness. "Happily incompatible" is a good adjustment.

Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.

To get a child's trust - you may know or not - is a very hard thing to do. They're so used to not believing adults - because adults tell tales and lies all the time.