Tales Quotes - Page 39

• ...You believe that the kind of story you want to tell might be best received by the science fiction and fantasy audience. I hope you're right, because in many ways this is the best audience in the world to write for. They're open-minded and intelligent. They want to think as well as feel, understand as well as dream. Above all, they want to be led into places that no one has ever visited before. It's a privilege to tell stories to these readers, and an honour when they applaud the tale you tell.

  Orson Scott Card

  Dream, Believe, Writing

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• Unkind people spread malicious tales, and well-intentioned people also censure; but in either case the tranquil sage remains unconcerned. Nowhere is there to be found a disconcerted sage.

  Gautama Buddha

  People, Sage, Found

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• I do not know the meaning of my sadness; there is an old fairy tale that I cannot get out of my mind.

  Heinrich Heine

  Sadness, Mind, Fairy Tale

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• There are certain scenes, certain hills and valleys and groves of pines which demand that a story shall be written about them. I would refine; I would say that the emotions aroused by these external things reverberating in the heart are indeed the story; or all that signifies the story....We translate a hill into a tale, conceive lovers to explain a brook, turn the perfect into the imperfect.

  Arthur Machen

  Heart, Perfect, Valleys

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• Most memoirs about alcoholism, promiscuity, and addiction are deep, sobering tales full of scars that will never heal and include alarming statistics and reflection about recovery.This is not one of those memoirs.

  Kate Madison

  Recovery, Reflection, Addiction

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• Leonard Cohen can give you "Leonard Cohen" - the self-deprecating wit, the slow, considered speech, the perfectly-honed anecdote - Tom Waits is far more comfortable giving a journalist "Tom Waits" the character, whose conversation is really a series of strange tales, learned or ad-libbed.

  Sylvie Simmons

  Character, Self, Giving

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The original Zal story by Ferdowsi gives a very moving account of an infant who had all odds against him - he was left to die in the wilderness and a giant, benevolent bird rescued him and became his guardian angel. This tale thrilled me; I've always wanted to write about it.

  Porochista Khakpour

  Moving, Writing, Angel

  Source: therumpus.net

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• As a writer, the ideal job is the one that allows you time and mental space away from it. Teaching seemed to me like the obvious choice - those summers off, you know - but my experience may serve as a cautionary tale.

  Debra Dean

  Summer, Jobs, Teaching

  Source: therumpus.net

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• From my point of view, why shouldn't I work in every possible mode, to see if it's viable? "Los Gigantes" would not have worked as a straightforward, naturalistic tale. Part of the fun of it is that it's so preposterous and yet at the same time, it could have happened. Think of eugenics. Hitler certainly would have been doing it if he could have.

  T.C. Boyle

  Fun, Thinking, Eugenics

  Source: therumpus.net

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• If there was no risk, it wouldn't be art. It wouldn't be worth making. There is risk even in a fairy tale. Fiction is closest to pure narrative, and pure narrative is simply the logic we try to impose on an ever-changing reality.

  Chris Abani

  Art, Reality, Risk

  Interview with Peter Orner, therumpus.net. February 10, 2014.

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• There were the fairy tales my father told to me at bedtime. All the standards. I thought my father invented wolves.

  John Dufresne

  Father, Bedtime, Fairy Tale

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to retrace my steps quite a lot, because the stories are very intricate and the material is elusive, and possibly with age, my memory is not as malleable as it used to be.

  Marina Warner

  Memories, Writing, Age

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I have many, many editions of the books, and they are all rather different. In the end, the one I used was the most recent French translation. French suits the tales well, and it's a beautiful translation. The Italian one is good as well... English has fallen short.

  Marina Warner

  Beautiful, Book, Italian

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Many of the enchanted things in the book are lamps, carpets, sofas, gems, brass rings. It is a rather different landscape than the fairy tale landscape of the West. Though we have interiors and palaces, we don't have bustling cities, and there isn't the emphasis on the artisan making things. The ambiance from which they were written was an entirely different one. The Arabian Nights comes out of a huge world of markets and trade. Cairo, Basra, Damascus: trades and skills.

  Marina Warner

  Book, Night, Skills

  Source: therumpus.net

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• There are a range of women not represented in the Western fairy tale tradition. Husband-beaters are particularly interesting, as well as male pederasts. Children are often told in The Arabian Nights, "This man likes to abduct boys, be careful of him." These issues are explored through the medium of the stories, but actually the architecture of the book is such that there are many examples of women who are loyal, brave, devoted - especially to their lovers.

  Marina Warner

  Children, Husband, Book

  Source: therumpus.net

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• The song "No Fairy Tale" tells my story. Going through the hard things leads to a richer life than just trying to make everything perfect, or worse, pretending things are good when they don't feel right. I've done that more than enough times.

  Lisa Loeb

  Song, Perfect, Trying

  "Interview with Grammy-Nominated Singer/Songwriter Lisa Loeb". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• There are these mythic unicorn-y tales of method acting, but Marlon [Brando] wanted to have a good time.

  Johnny Depp

  Acting, Unicorn, Good Times

  "Johnny Depp on His Varied Career, Jack Sparrow, and “Torturing” Leonardo DiCaprio". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. February 6, 2016.

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• The reason that stepmothers are often the bad guy in fairy tales is because people died in childbirth, all the time, so fathers remarried and there would be a struggle between the children and the new wife, in terms of who would inherit what.

  Chris Weitz

  Children, Father, Struggle

  Source: collider.com

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• You know, we didn't want to kill anyone, but we knew that "Star Wars" is a generational tale. It always is. And for it to have some guts and some resonance and true stakes, I don't think that everyone could have come through the story unscathed.

  J. J. Abrams

  Stars, War, Thinking

  "'Star Wars' Just Keeps Breaking Records". "All Things Considered" with Kelly Mcevers, www.npr.org. January 8, 2016.

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• I had to create a children's show, because we wanted the money - and it was, interestingly enough, the first project at the Angel Island theatre space. We did the show, an adaptation of Grimm's Fairy Tales. It was hardcore Grimm - nothing was sanitized - and it was called 'The Mary-Arrchie Kid's Show.' It was well-received, and so I applied to do it through Urban Gateways in Chicago.

  Richard Cotovsky

  Children, Kids, Angel

  Source: www.hollywoodchicago.com

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• Many fairy tales and ballads present us with animals who are nobler, truer, and kinder than the greedy human beings who desire to possess them. I guess I tend to read these stories as very early (and possibly unconscious) feminist texts.

  Delia Sherman

  Animal, Feminist, Desire

  Source: www.sfsignal.com

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• Everyone would tell me they couldn't identify with sexual abuse. No one says they can't identify with the tales of the Greek gods and goddesses because they don't live on Mt. Olympus.

  Alexander Chee

  Greek, Abuse, Olympus

  "Go Forth (Vol. 41)". Interview with Kristen Evans, logger.believermag.com. February 26, 2016.

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• In college, I became interested in folk tales and fairy tales. Gradually I became more and more interested in the underlying meaning of it all and the possibility of the reality of real fairies.

  Brian Froud

  Real, College, Fairy Tale

  Source: rayhemachandra.com

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• I had a story-telling mother; she's written novels and short stories. So I feel like maybe I'm staying alive by telling tales.

  Ayshay

  Mother, Stories, Alive

  Source: pitchfork.com

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• I had Paterson, and The Art Lover, to guide me for The Tales of Horror (written from 1988-'97 and published in 1999), but I still was so lost, back then, as I tried to understand what I was writing and how it went together. There was a draft of that manuscript that had all these brightly colored paper clips on the pages so I could visualize what I saw as the book's themes and threads - that was a long time ago.

  Laura Mullen

  Art, Book, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

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