Quotes About Fairy tales

All good fairy tales have meaning to many levels, Bruno Bettleheim observes in The Uses of Enchantment. Only the child can know which meanings are significance to him at the moment.

If the wishes came true, they came true in terrible ways. Wishes were dangerous things. That was the idea you got from fairy tales.

The whole reason for telling the fairy tales is to awaken the heart. To help people believe that misfortune can be overcome and evil conquered.

Fairy tales ... give us hope that we can somehow be saved, rescued, healed. Transformed in some way for the better. As we travel with the fairy tale protagonist through the dark and dangerous forest, as we suffer with them and triumph with them, we follow them back into the brightness of a world renewed. Fairy tales are an instruction manual for psychological healing.

Fairy tales are not just for children. They are for all humans, having the power to help us change not only ourselves but, indeed, the whole world.

I have been fascinated with fairy tales ever since I was first given a red leather-bound copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales when I was just seven years old. Of all the stories of beauty and peril and adventure within its pages, it was the story of 'Rapunzel' that resonated with me most powerfully.

Fairy tales have been with us for a very long time. Ever since humans invented language, we have used those sounds laden with meaning to create stories – to teach, to warn, to entertain, and to effect change upon the world. Those stories have been handed down through many generations – changing with each retelling, but still carrying within them the same wisdom and transformative power that has helped shape the human psyche.

Fairy tales have a hidden power, and their appeal never ends. They're the best way to get messages across.

Fairy tales do not deny the existence of . . . sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence if you will) universal final defeat . . . giving a glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. —J. R. R. Tolkien

You are far too old for fairy tales, Miss Speedwell. Surely you know the life of royalty is not at all as we believe it to be. It is a prison—a gilded one—but a prison nonetheless.

Fantasy is, I believe, the great nourisher of imagination. To paraphrase Einstein on how to develop intelligence in young people: Read fairy tales. Then read more fairy tales.

I love fairy tale retellings and mash-ups.

I'm not a big fan of kids' movies that have this knowing snarkiness to them or this post-modern take on storytelling. I think that sails right over the heads of most kids. There's something to be said for a well-told fairy tale. There's a reason that these mythic stories stay with us.

One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.

I have a bit of a love affair with fairy tales and some of the ideas of Irish mythology, like Oscar Wilde and W.B. Yeats, who captured a lot of that very beautifully.

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.

I think people should read fairy tales, because we're hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.

I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favorite.

I love monsters, I love creatures, I love beings, I love aliens. That's more supernatural and more the stuff of fairy tales. Fairy tales are as ancient as we are. I love those stories. I think they're really interesting because they always have more than simply the fright aspect. There's something deeply psychological.

I have never dreamed of being a princess. I have not longed for Prince Charming. I have and do long for something resembling a happily ever after. I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not. I am enamored of fairy tales.

I grew up with a lot of fairy tales. And they had an essence of darkness to them.

The spark for 'In Praise of Slowness' came when I began reading to my children. Every parent knows that kids like their bedtime stories read at a gentle, meandering pace. But I used to be too fast to slow down with the Brothers Grimm. I would zoom through the classic fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, whole pages.

There have been a number of us working very, very hard to bring myth and fairy tales into public consciousness, through fantasy literature and other media. I hope we're succeeding in some small way.