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8e41a34 Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. fairy-tales books inspirational paraphrasing-g-k-chesterton dragons Neil Gaiman
41473c9 When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair. fairy-tales taylor-swift inspirational prince-charming Taylor Swift
addd5d2 There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable. fairy-tales inspirational Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
d6629b0 There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire. fairy-tales fantasy Neil Gaiman
c674a39 There are many kinds of joy, but they all lead to one: the joy to be loved. fairy-tales fantasy michael-ende Michael Ende
92d3b7d Think of every fairy-tale villainess you've ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they've all been real. Mab gave them . fairy-tales Jim Butcher
ea2cbd8 Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon. fairy-tales inspirational bogeyman dragons dragon G.K. Chesterton
87200e6 "Did I ever tell you the difference between a Northern fairy tale and a Southern one?" she asked him, indulging herself and letting her head rest on his shoulder. God, he felt good. Her man. Where her head was meant to lie, right there, on him. "What's the difference?" "A Northern one starts 'once upon a time,' while a Southern one starts 'y'all ain't going to believe this shit." fairy-tales funny Erin McCarthy
2019653 And in what fairy tale would John ever be any sane person's idea of Prince Charming anyway? He was the opposite of charming. More like Prince Terrifying. fairy-tales humor prince-charming terror Meg Cabot
1a5d2e4 He was walking into Faerie, in search of a fallen star, with no idea how he would find the star, nor how to keep himself safe and whole as he tried. He looked back and fancied that he could see the lights of Wall behind him, wavering and glimmering as if in a heat-haze, but still inviting. fairy-tales fantasy Neil Gaiman
13e56d2 You don't need princes to save you. I don't have a lot of patience for stories in which women are rescued by men. fairy-tales women love inspriational lesbianism strong-heroine women-s-strength Neil Gaiman
2bb1ecf She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind? fairy-tales lovely sleep dreams inspirational inkheart sleeping dreaming Cornelia Funke
cf1955b The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords. fairy-tales J.R.R. Tolkien
1f4a07e Studies [on the origin of fairy-stories] are, however, scientific (at least in intent); they are the pursuit of folklorists or anthropologists: that is of people using the stories not as they were meant to be used, but as a quarry from which to dig evidence, or information, about matters in which they are interested. ...with regard to fairy stories, I feel that it is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are, what they have become for us, and what values the long alchemic processes of time have produced in them. In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.' Such stories have now a mythical or total (unanalysable) effect, an effect quite independent of the findings of Comparative Folk-lore, and one which it cannot spoil or explain; they open a door on Other Time, and if we pass through, though only for a moment, we stand outside our own time, outside Time itself, maybe. fairy-tales folklore-studies J.R.R. Tolkien
2b8071f Yesterday's fairy tale is today's fact. The magician is only one step ahead of his audience. fairy-tales magic reality science Anne Morrow Lindbergh
8d1e812 Sometimes you must shed your skin to save it. fairy-tales inspirational skin Emma Donoghue
08a1efd "It is winter now, and the roses are blooming again, their petals bright against the snow. My father died last April; my sisters no longer write, except at the turning of the year, content with their fine houses and their grandchildren. Beast and I putter in the gardens and walk slowly on the forest paths. fairy-tales Jane Yolen
10c2a5f "Sometimes I think Earth has got to be the insane asylum of the universe. . . and I'm here by computer error. At sixty-eight, I hope I've gained some wisdom in the past fourteen lustrums and it's obligatory to speak plain and true about the conclusions I've come to; now that I have been educated to believe by such mentors as Wells, Stapledon, Heinlein, van Vogt, Clarke, Pohl, (S. Fowler) Wright, Orwell, Taine, Temple, Gernsback, Campbell and other seminal influences in scientifiction, I regret the lack of any female writers but only Radclyffe Hall opened my eyes outside sci-fi. fairy-tales morality science hope humanist belief science-fiction secular danger utopia atheist respect sci-fi Forrest J. Ackerman
4c8a5b3 "Contemporary writers use animal-transformation themes to explore issues of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and the process of transformation...just as storytellers have done, all over the world, for many centuries past. One distinct change marks modern retellings, however, reflecting our changed relationship to animals and nature. In a society in which most of us will never encounter true danger in the woods, the big white bear who comes knocking at the door [in fairy tales] is not such a frightening prospective husband now; instead, he's exotic, almost appealing. Whereas once wilderness was threatening to civilization, now it's been tamed and cultivated; the dangers of the animal world have a nostalgic quality, removed as they are from our daily existence. This removal gives "the wild" a different kind of power; it's something we long for rather than fear. The shape-shifter, the were-creature, the stag-headed god from the heart of the woods--they come from a place we'd almost forgotten: the untracked forests of the past; the primeval forests of the mythic imagination; the forests of our childhood fantasies: untouched, unspoiled, limitless. Likewise, tales of Animal Brides and Bridegrooms are steeped in an ancient magic and yet powerfully relevant to our lives today. They remind us of the wild within us...and also within our lovers and spouses, the part of them we can never quite know. They represent the Others who live beside us--cat and mouse and coyote and owl--and the Others who live only in the dreams and nightmares of our imaginations. For thousands of years, their tales have emerged from the place where we draw the boundary lines between animals and human beings, the natural world and civilization, women and men, magic and illusion, fiction and the lives we live." fairy-tales myth fantasy shape-shifting Terri Windling
b00e8ec "It was an irresistible development of modern illustration (so largely photographic) that borders should be abandoned and the "picture" end only with the paper. This method may be suitable for for photographs; but it is altogether inappropriate for the pictures that illustrate or are inspired by fairy-stories. An enchanted forest requires a margin, even an elaborate border. To print it coterminous with the page, like a "shot" of the Rockies in Picture Post, as if it were indeed a "snap" of fairyland or a "sketch by our artist on the spot", is a folly and an abuse." fairy-tales fantasy enchanted-forest illustration fairy photographs J.R.R. Tolkien
0ce64ad Think of every fairy-tale villainess you've ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they've all been real. fairy-tales jim-butcher Jim Butcher
0ebe346 There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real. fairy-tales magic fantasy fairy-tale princess manifestation Frances Hodgson Burnett
f83aef9 "One of my favourite things to do when I write is to bring a sense of wonder to a normal everyday setting... Yes, there are magical elements, but there are also very down-to-earth elements and often what shines through isn't the magic, but the lanterns that the characters light against the dark... If you substitute the words "fairy tale" or "myth" for "fantasy," the reason I use these elements in my own work is that they create resonances that illuminate solutions to the real world struggle without the need for an authorial voice to point them out. Magic never solves the problems-we have to do that on our own-but in fiction it allows the dialogue to have a much more organic approach than the talking heads one can encounter in fiction that doesn't utilize the same tools. fairy-tales myth magic writing fantasy Charles de Lint
0ff765a Everything that was not so must go. All the beautiful literary lies and flights of fancy must be shot in mid-air! So they lined them up against a library wall one Sunday morning thirty years ago, in 2006; they lined them up, St. Nicholas and the Headless Horseman and Snow White and Rumpelstiltskin and Mother Goose--oh, what a wailing!--and shot them down, and burned the paper castles and the fairy frogs and old kings and the people who lived happily ever after (for of course it was a fact that nobody lived happily ever after!), and Once Upon A Time became No More! And they spread the ashes of the Phantom Rickshaw with the rubble of the Land of Oz; they filleted the bones of Glinda the Good and Ozma and the shattered Polychrome in a spectroscope and served Jack Pumpkinhead with meringue at the Biologists' Ball! The Beanstalk died in a bramble of red tape! Sleeping Beauty awoke at the kiss of a scientist and expired at a fatal puncture of his syringe. And they made Alice drink something from a bottle which reduced her to a size where she could no longer cry 'Curiouser and curioser,' and they gave the Looking Glass one hammer blow to smash it and every Red King and Oyster away! fairy-tales Ray Bradbury
7624765 ...while the outside world was full of danger, I knew my interior. I was certain that I could oust an intruder there. fairy-tales fairytale princesses introvert introspection Gail Carson Levine
89d9980 Ah--now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple. fairy-tales stories Jane Yolen
81b5535 "I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like 's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of , and 's splendid book . (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.) I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love early fantasy novels. Oh, and " " by fairy-tales reading folk-ballads folklore influences pre-raphaelite Terri Windling
81a869a I know now that all people hunger for a noble, unsullied past, that as sure as the black nationalist dreams of a sublime Africa before the white man's corruption, so did Thomas Jefferson dream of an idyllic Britain before the Normans, so do all of us dream of some other time when things were so simple. I know now that that hunger is a retreat from the knotty present into myth and that what ultimately awaits those who retreat into fairy tales, who seek refuge in the mad pursuit to be made great again, in the image of greatness that never was, is tragedy. fairy-tales cultural-myths maga make-america-great-again pound-cake-speech revisionist-history myths Ta-Nehisi Coates
bdf22c0 Once upon a time the fairy tales begin. But then they end and often you don't know really what has happened, what was meant to happen, you only know what you've been told, what the words suggest. fairy-tales words suggest end Joyce Carol Oates
1170f92 Am I the same cold, ragged damp Sara? And to think I used to pretend and pretend and wish there were fairies! The one thing I always wanted was to see a fairy story come true. I am in a fairy story. I feel as if I might be a fairy myself, and able to turn things into anything else. fairy-tales magic frances-hodgson-burnett the-little-princess fairy Frances Hodgson Burnett
a6c163c More than Captain America your kids need Amelia Earhart - more than Ant Man, they need Abraham Lincoln - more than Green Arrow they need Gandhi - more than Iron Man they need Isaac Newton. fairy-tales parenting-children child-psychology parenting-101 parenting-advice parenting-teenagers parents-advice parents-and-responsibility parents-and-teenagers parents-quotes parents-responsibility raising-kids parenting fiction-fantasy parents parents-and-children children parenthood Abhijit Naskar
3c46de4 Princess, princess, youngest daughter, Open up and let me in! Or else your promise by the water Isn't worth a rusty pin. Keep your promise, royal daughter, Open up and let me in! fairy-tales iron-heinrich philip-pullman the-frog-king rhyme Philip Pullman
dcd9731 I learned that we may meet a true love and that our lives may be transformed by such an encounter even when it does not lead to sexual pleasure, committed bonding, or even sustained contact. The myth of true love-that fairy-tale vision of two souls who meet, join, and live happily ever thereafter-is the stuff of childhood fantasy. Yet many of us, female and male, carry these fantasies into adulthood and are unable to cope with the reality of what it means to either have an intense life-altering connection that will not lead to an ongoing relationship or to be in a relationship. True love does not always lead to happily ever after, and even when it does sustaining love still takes work. fairy-tales love-quotes true-love love love-is-hard love-at-first-sight bell hooks
56c0976 People would rather believe in fairy godmothers and divine intervention than to think that you took charge of your own destiny. fairy-tales feminism destiny Margaret Peterson Haddix
e4c333b I turned into Little Red Riding Hood. I made a cake, packed it up and went through the forest until I met the wolves. That's something the story got wrong, wolves don't travel solo, they hunt in packs. fairy-tales Louise Welsh
267eb88 So was she on the side of dragons and indifferent to the fate of princesses? fairy-tales princesses tropes the-green-knight iris-murdoch Iris Murdoch
e3173ee The nine rubies were used afterwards in agriculture. You had only to throw them out into a field if you wanted it plowed. Then the whole surface of the land turned itself over in its anxiety to get rid of something so wicked, and in the morning the field was found to be plowed as thoroughly as any young man at Oxford. fairy-tales drinking humor E. Nesbit
ce9725e Rosina had the fierce charm of the rather nasty girl in the fairy-tale who fails to get the prince, but is more interesting than the girl who does, and has better lines too. fairy-tales women nasty Iris Murdoch
07bacfa The Dark Fairy touched her chest. No heart, like her sisters. So where did the love come from? fairy-tales young-adult fantasy love fairytales heartless-love portal-fantasy young-adult-fantasy Cornelia Funke
bd09341 You make peace with one sister only to declare war on the other. It's always like that with peace, isn't it? Always to someone's detriment, already sowing the seed for the next war. fairy-tales war young-adult fantasy war-and-peace portal-fantasy young-adult-fantasy peace Cornelia Funke
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