Fes Quotes

The French fairy tale writers were so popular and prolific that when their stories were eventually collected in the 18th century, they filled forty–one volumes of a massive publication called the Cabinet des Fées. Charles Perrault is the French fairy tale writer whom history has singled out for attention, but the majority of tales in the Cabinet des Fées were penned by women writers who ran and attended the leading salons: Marie–Catherine d'Aulnoy, Henriette Julie de Murat, Marie–Jeanne L'Héritier, and numerous others. These were educated women with an unusual degree of social and artistic independence, and within their use of the fairy tale form one can find distinctly subversive, even feminist subtext. ~ Terri Windling

Madame d'Aulnoy is the true mother of the modern fairy tale. She invented the modern Court of Fairyland, with its manners, its fairies, its queens, its amorous, its cruel, its good, its evil, its odious, its friendly fées. ~ Andrew Lang

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes. ~ Tahir Shah

Les contes de fées c'est comme ça.
Un matin on se réveille.
On dit: "Ce n'était qu'un conte de fées..."
On sourit de soi.
Mais au fond on ne sourit guère.
On sait bien que les contes de fées
c'est la seule vérité de la vie.

Fairy tales are like that.
One morning, we wake up
and say, "It was only a fairy tale..."
We put a smile on our face
but deep inside, this isn't what we feel like doing.
It's because we know full well that fairy tales
are the only truth in life.

[The English translation is Lucrèce Riminiac's.] ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery