Tale Of Genji Quotes

Reality withing the depths of night has no more substance than the lucid dream. ~ The Tale Of Genji

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine
why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity (because they are not themselves at the center of creation, cannot bear children) that a woman writer of genius evokes murderous rage, must be brushed aside with a sneer as 'irrelevant'? ~ May Sarton

Maybe Laura's real problem came in admitting this: there was nothing new under the sun. To write a story would be, somehow deep down, to embrace her limits, to admit that, indeed, she would someday die - if not of a worm or a ceiling, then of something else. The very nature of a story admitted this reality. To be a writer was to say, yes, I am just another Murasaki, and it is quite possible that no one will remember my name. ~ L.L. Barkat

I'd have you see the like this; I'd have you see them very well. Will you? They are clustered around Suzie's Cruisin Trike, embracing in the aftermath of their victory. I'd have you see them this way not because they have won a great battle - they know better than that, every one of them - but because now they are ka-tet for the last time. The story of their fellowship ends here, on this make-believe street and beneath this artificial sun; the rest of the tale will be short and brutal compared to all that's gone before. Because when ka-tet breaks, the end always comes quickly.
Say sorry. ~ Stephen King

The 'punch' of a truly weird tale is simply some violation or transcending of fixed cosmic law - an imaginative escape from palling reality - hence, phenomena rather than persons are the logical 'heroes.' ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Well the wedding in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury was a fairy tale and there was a huge public impress, investment of goodwill, affection and indeed money in this Institution. It was a huge success at the time. ~ Anthony Holden

Since these wonder tales have been with us for thousands of years and have undergone so many different changes in the oral tradition, it is difficult to determine the ideological intention of the narrator, and when we disregard the narrator's intention, it is often difficult to reconstruct (and/or deconstruct) the ideological meaning of a tale. In the last analysis, even if we cannot establish whether a wonder tale is ideologically conservative, sexist, progressive, emancipatory, etc., it is the celebration of wonder that constitutes its major appeal. No matter what the plot may be, this type of tale calls forth our capacity as readers and potential transmitters of its signs and meanings to wonder. We do not want to know the exact resolution, the "happily ever after," of a tale - that is, what it is actually like. We do not want to name God, gods, goddesses, or fairies, who will forever remain mysterious and omnipotent. We do not want to form graven images. We do not want utopia designated for us. We want to remain curious, startled, provoked, mystified, and uplifted. We want to glare, gaze, gawk, behold, and stare. We want to be given opportunities to change, and ultimately we want to be told that we can become kings and queens, or lords of our own destinies. We remember wonder tales and fairy tales to keep our sense of wonderment alive and to nurture our hope that we can seize possibilities and opportunities to transform ourselves and our worlds. ~ Jack D. Zipes

The rose fell, a brief fragrant blazing meteor before it plummeted to the cold stones, forgotten. ~ Melinda O'Donnell

Love is not a businessman who wants to see a return on his investments. And imagination needs only a few nails on which to hang its veil. Whether they are of gold, tin, or covered with rust makes no difference to it. Wherever it gets caught, it is caught. Thornbush or rosebush, as soon as the veil of moonlight and mother-of-pearl has fallen on it, either becomes a fairy tale out of A Thousand and One Nights ~ Erich Maria Remarque

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. ~ Walter Mosley

Even the ancient mariner, with his wonderful tale, succeeded in stopping only one of three! No book is for everybody. ~ Leon Garfield

When you look at Mark Zuckerberg and Snapchat and all these twentysomething billionaires, it's really kind of fascinating; a classic tale of the haves and have-nots. ~ Steven Bochco

For those who immerse themselves in what the fairy tale has to communicate, it becomes a deep, quiet pool which at first seems to reflect only our own image; but behind it we soon discover the inner turmoils of our soul - its depth, and ways to gain peace within ourselves and with the world, which is the reward of our struggles. ~ Bruno Bettelheim

Tell it to me."
"Why? We both know the tale."
"Even so. I want to hear it from your lips. Tell the tale. The room will keep rhythm."
Tell the tale. My heart clenched. I miss you, Gauri. Sinking into my old habit was easy enough. I sat on the floor, crossing my legs in front of me, my gaze flickering between Amar and the pillar. Amar's eyes were closed, his head tilted back to expose his bronzed throat. I spun my tale and the sky shimmered with images. I told Amar of the demon king who wished to escape death so he performed the most severe penances until he was granted a boon by the gods.
"He prayed that he would not die inside or outside his home. He prayed that he would die neither at night or day nor in the ground or in the sky. He prayed that neither man nor beast could kill him. He prayed no weapon could harm him."
Amar's head snapped up. He looked at the pillar with a wicked smile.
"And yet death found its way to him."
I nodded. "One day, the god appeared as part-man, part-lion and burst forth from the pillar."
A being of shadow tore through the pillar. A lion's mane cast a torn shadow across the marble. Fangs lengthened in its mouth.
"He came upon the demon king at twilight--"
"--which is neither night nor day," said Amar.
"And he appeared on the threshold of a courtyard--"
"Neither indoors nor out."
"And he spread the king across his lap."
"Neither above nor below ground."
The shadow story playe ~ Roshani Chokshi

I admit, I bear my share of the responsibility for their getting it all wrong, so I guess I'm just going to tell this story as if you knew nothing, because, in reality, even if you read every single article published up to the moment of the big announcement, about the truth, you do know nothing. ~ David Clawson

So," he called to her back, "Just out of curiosity, you know, purely conversation and all, at what age will you be entertaining offers of marriage?"
"You think it'll be so easy?" she called back over her shoulder. "No way. There will be tasks. Like in a fairy tale."
"Sounds dangerous."
"Very, so think twice."
"No need," he said. "You're worth it. ~ Laini Taylor

Who is that trip-trapping upon my bridge?'
Miss Davies spoke in the low, growling tones of the troll in the story. Some of the little ones covered their mouths and giggled, but most only watched her solemnly, accepting the
voice of the troll as they accepted the voices of their dreams, and their grave eyes reflected the eternal fascination of the fairy tale: would the monster be bested ... or would it feed? ~ Stephen King

Fairy tales only happen in movies.
-George Melies
from The Invention of Hugo Cabret ~ Brian Selznick

It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests - and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith - the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. ~ Joseph Conrad

Uh-uh, dude. I tried it your way with the dating and the girls and the kissing and the drama, and man, I didn't like it. Plus, my best friend is a walking cautionary tale of what happens to you when romantic relationships don't involve marriage. Like you always say, kafir, everything ends in breakup, divorce, or death. I want to narrow my misery options to divorce or death - that's all. ~ John Green

There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.

No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.

Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister ~ Neil Gaiman

We are a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice. ~ Margaret Atwood

Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Tale of Taj al-Muluk and the Princess Dunya (The Lover and the Loved). ~ Anonymous

In his anti-Darwinian book ... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story ... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Father would say that we only have here and now. There is no use worrying about tomorrow, because today is tomorrow that we worried about yeserday. ~ Eaon R Jackson

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story. ~ Donald Miller

In a story there is always a reader, and this reader is a fundamental ingredient not only of the process of storytelling but also of the tale itself. Today, ~ Umberto Eco

I am not moved to love Thee, 0 my Lord,
By any longing for Thy Promised Land;
Nor by the fear of hell am I unmanned
To cease from my transgressing deed or word.
Tis Thou Thyself dost move me, - Thy blood poured
Upon the cross from nailed foot and hand;
And all the wounds that did Thy body brand;
And all Thy shame and bitter death's award.

Yea, to Thy heart am I so deeply stirred
That I would love Thee were no heaven on high, -
That I would fear, were hell a tale absurd!
Such my desire, all questioning grows vain;
Though hope deny me hope I still should sigh,
And as ray love is now, it should remain.

(To Christ Crucified) ~ Thomas Walsh

It may look as though I do not know how to start. Funny sight, the elderly gentleman who comes lumbering by, jowl flesh flopping, in a valiant dash for the last bus, which he eventually overtakes but is afraid to board in motion and so, with a sheepish smile, drops back, still going at a trot. Is it that I dare not make the leap? It roars, gathers speed, will presently vanish irrevocably around the corner, the bus, the motorbus, the mighty montibus of my tale. Rather bulky imagery, this. I am still running. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Let the fairy tale begin on a winter's morning, then, with one drop of blood newly-fallen on the ivory snow: a drop as bright as a clear-cut ruby, red as a single spot of claret on the lace cuff. ~ Ellen Kushner

This is the end of an epic tale, the story of my coming of age, which, like in the novels of the same description, went from wonder to ambition, from ambition to disillusion, and from disillusion to cynicism. ~ Muriel Barbery

The world,' he said, 'grows hourly more and more sceptical of all that lies beyond its own narrow radius; and our men of science foster the fatal tendency. They condemn as fable all that resists experiment. They reject as false all that cannot be brought to the test of the laboratory or the dissecting-room. Against what superstition have they waged so long and obstinate a war, as against the belief of apparitions? And yet what superstition has maintained its hold upon the minds of men so long and so firmly? Show me any fact in physics, in history, in archaeology, which is supported by testimony so wide and so various. Attested by all races of men, in all ages, and in all climates, by the soberest sages of antiquity, by the rudest savage of today, by the Christian, the Pagan, the Pantheist, the Materialist, this phenomenon is treated as a nursery tale by the philosophers of our century. Circumstantial evidence weighs with them as a feather in the balance. The comparison of causes with effects, however valuable in physical science, is put aside as worthless and unreliable. The evidence of competent witnesses, however conclusive in a court of justice, counts for nothing. He who pauses before he pronounces is condemned as a trifler. He who believes, is a dreamer or a fool. ~ Amelia B. Edwards

You know what's worse than burying your own child? Not burying your own child. ~ John Hennessy

You mean I'm a frigging Werewolf! You have got to be kidding me, apart from a little, ok a lot of PMS, I don't howl at the moon!' This was too much, I'd been poisoned, and now I find I might go hairy and eat people once a month!
'No. child. You are descended from the first brave women who said 'no', who raised their children without the curse of the Lycanthrope. Your bloodlines enable you to tolerate the line and draw on its power. Now listen to the rest of the tale while I make you some more tea'. ~ E.M. Kernow

For the widow inhabits a tale not of her own telling. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The Gods and Goddesses of myth, legend and fairy tale represent archetypes, real potencies and potentialities deep within the psyche, which, when allowed to flower permit us to be more fully human. ~ Margot Adler

a tale of myth mystery,
and a past long forgotten. ~ Lisa M. Green

Once in awhile, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale...♥~ ~ Anonymous

In a fairy tale I would be one of the two stupid sisters who open the forbidden door and are shocked by the murdered wives, not the third, clever one who keeps to the essentials: presence of mind, foresight, the telling of watertight lies. I told lies but they were not watertight. My mind was not disciplined, as Arthur sometimes pointed out. ~ Margaret Atwood

Europe is often held up as a cautionary tale, a demonstration that if you try to make the economy less brutal, to take better care of your fellow citizens when they're down on their luck, you end up killing economic progress. But what European experience actually demonstrates is the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand. ~ Paul Krugman

Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it's roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion's heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale. ~ Priya Ardis

The fireplace is warm nook Penina Mezei's house in fairy tale in which the "fairy-tale-in Jukebox" can listen to while in the "fairy library" books are fairy tales and books of fairy tales, but also some fairy-tale subject. ~ Penina Mezei

Listen, my father had written. Listen to hear if they are telling the truth or only part of the truth, for that is the lesson of history: that the victors tell the tale of their triumph in a manner to grant accolades to themselves and heap blame upon their rivals. Ask yourself if part of the story is being withheld by design or ignorance. ~ Kate Elliott