Contemporary Fairy Tale Quotes

I avoided my eyes while brushing my teeth, then climbed into bed with a copy of _The Blind Assassin_, because if you're not with the book you want, you might as well want the book you're with.
--Melissa Albert, _The Hazel Wood_ ~ Melissa Albert

Fairy tales for adult readers remained popular throughout Europe well into the 19th century - particularly in Germany, where the Brothers Grimm published their massive collection of German fairy tales (revised and edited to reflect the Brothers' patriotic and patriarchal ideals), providing inpiration for novelists, poets, and playrights among the German Romantics. Recently, fairy tale scholars have re–discovered the enormous body of work produced by women writers associated with the German Romantics: Grisela von Arnim, Sophie Tieck Bernhardi, Karoline von Günderrode, Julie Berger, and Sophie Albrecht, to name just a few. ~ Terri Windling

I'm romantically inclined. No human being on Earth is not attracted to other people. There is no fairy tale that they only have eyes for you. You just choose to act on it or not. ~ Ben Folds

The thing about fairy tales is that the princess finds her prince, but there's generally a price to pay. A compromise of some kind is required for happily ever after. The woman in the fairy tale is generally the one who pays the price, which is such a rotten deal. This seems to be the nature of sacrifice in most matters. ~ Roxane Gay

None of this was part of the plan all the girls I'd grown up with had been given. Not a written plan, unless the book about Cinderella counted. The plan was in the water we drank, the air we breathed. It was poured into the pavement on the streets we called home. Marry a nice man, one who was a good provider, and live happily, or at least comfortably, ever after.

Safe to say I'd followed the plan. I'd married a banker. Had a baby. But the plan had failed me. It left me alone huddled in a window seat with every emotion I'd refused to let myself feel seeping through my pores until the air in my bedroom was heavy with sadness and angst and confusion. (p. 235) ~ Julie Mulhern

I grew up thinking that they were a fairy tale, you know? It turns out they were just like anyone else. Somehow that makes it even more magical. ~ Kiera Cass

Men like him, the kind of guys who left the womb fighting? They didn't get fairy-tale endings. They burned bright until they burned out - and he was burning out. ~ Tonya Burrows

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale. ~ Peter S. Beagle

Like the hero of a fairy-tale Mr Norrell had discovered that the power to do what he wished had been his own all along. ~ Susanna Clarke

The universe has a much greater imagination than we do, which is why the real story of the universe is far more interesting than any of the fairy tales we have invented to describe it. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience. ~ Kate Forsyth

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives' fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history! ~ Charles Lamb

Of one thing be certain: if a CEO is enthused about a particularly foolish acquisition, both his internal staff and his outside advisors will come up with whatever projections are needed to justify his stance. Only in fairy tales are emperors told that they are naked. ~ Warren Buffett

You don't get it. They gave me beauty and song, and then I was left in the woods to grow up for sixteen years before being handed over to you. I don't know anything about ruling. I don't even really know what taxes are. I was in the woods in the real world. In the dreamworld, I hid like a mouse and then organized balls and parties. ~ Liz Braswell

To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case.
To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case – that is, to be killed.
This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman. ~ Angela Carter

The literary fairy tale became an acceptable social symbolic form through which conventionalized motifs, characters, and plots were selected, composed, arranged, and rearranged to comment on the civilizing process and to keep alive the possibility of miraculous change and a sense of wonderment. ~ Jack D. Zipes

I'm so excited to see 'Horns' because it's so many different genres in one film. It's a sci-fi, it's a love story, it's a horror movie, it's a fairy tale. ~ Juno Temple

In biology, fungus is a kingdom unto itself, a documented land of rot and decay, a place for yeasts and molds and spores and every manner of thing that grows in the dark, a fairy tale gone wrong. ~ A.S.A Harrison

That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Cassie spoke up, "He is like Peter Pan and the Lost Boys." ...
Tameron said "No one is lost here. And we have just as many girls, well, maybe not as many as we have boys, but a fair amount. Who is this Peter Pan you speak of? A hero?" he asked Cassie.
Alicia spoke up then ... "He led a group of boys in a world of adventure on an island paradise."
Tameron looked at Cassie to see if she agreed. She smiled and nodded.
"This Peter Pan was real?" he asked.
"No, he was a fairy... uhm, tale," Cassie said.
Tameron smiled. "I like the idea. I'll have to read it sometime... ~ Terry Spear

He will say less than he means, and conceal more than he reveals. ~ John Connolly

You think this is a corsage? How adorably human of you. ~ A.G. Howard

You know, I once had a little boy in Hiddleston come up to me and ask if I conjured up the hartsstone."
"What did you tell him?" he asked.
She spoke in her scratchy, witchy voice, "Why of course I do. Every full moon, my boy. And the wolves howl. And the fairies rise from their bowers, then we dance in a round, breathing in the powerful magic of the hartstone. ~ Juliette Cross

Dragons and bridges are very much something out of fairy tales and fantasy. ~ John Howe

I loved her, and a curse made me forget. But she came for me and broke the curse and now I must go. ~ Katherine Arden

I will tell you, too, that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts or minds, an Empress as well as the woman who does her laundry ... Perhaps it is that a shoemaker's daughter can bear restraint less easily than an aristocrat, that what he can bear for three years she can endure only for three days ... Or perhaps my moral is that our desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy tale. ~ Theodora Goss

Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world. I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale
a daydream."
"Which I can and will realise. I shall begin today. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Why could he not have chosen some other woman? Why Avelina? But he knew why. It was because she had seemed good and kind and had expressed her thoughts without any false pride or pretense. He had admired her forthrightness and her compassion. And although he had never thought of a wife with strong opinions was a good thing, he actually found he liked her opinions-or at least admired her for having them. He wanted to get to know her, to know everything that was in her heart. He wanted to marry her and, surprising even himself, to love her. ~ Melanie Dickerson

Every fairy tale needs a Villain. ~ Anonymous

But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always. ~ Kelly Barnhill

I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say.
Then of course the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. As obligation to feel can freeze feelings. (from the essay Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said) ~ C.S. Lewis

(fairy tale).
i wanna tell you a joke
but it will be like the frog finds the princess
says she's not enough
then jumps out of window
i wanna show you
a bit of snow on fingertips
so it will speak why the beauty is not for the ugly
and dwarves cannot run after white horse
i wanna tell you
how much a kiss costs
that sways both lives away
so that you may
remain us.
but you see, fairy tales start with curses
and so do we. ~ Zelda Gin

Faërie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons; it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Walk without a stick into the darkest woods. Believe that the fairy tale is true. ~ Cheryl Strayed

My Prince Charming turned out to be the villain of my fairy tale. ~ J.M. Darhower

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. ~ Billy Graham

Fans love Sosa for his exuberance, for the kisses he blows to his mother, wife and four children. He is Slammin' Sammy, a fairy-tale figure rising from poverty in the Dominican Republic to the 55th floor above Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. ~ Bill Dedman

What I like about fairy tales is that they highlight the emotions within a story. The situations aren't real, with falling stars and pirates. But what you do relate to is the emotions that the characters feel. ~ Charlie Cox