Mcbratney > Mcbratney's Quotes

“The evil stepmother is a fixture in European fairy tales because the stepmother was very much a fixture in early European society–mortality in childbirth was very high, and it wasn’t unusual for a father to suddenly find himself alone with multiple mouths to feed. So he remarried and brought another woman into the house, and eventually they had yet more children, thus changing the power dynamics of inheritance in the household in a way that had very little to do with inherent, archetypal evil and everything to do with social expectation and pressure. What was a woman to do when she remarried into a family and had to act as mother to her husband’s children as well as her own, in a time when economic prosperity was a magical dream for most? Would she think of killing her husband’s children so that her own children might therefore inherit and thrive? [...] Perhaps. Perhaps not. But the fear that stepmothers (or stepfathers) might do this kind of thing was very real, and it was that fear–fed by the socioeconomic pressures felt by the growing urban class–that fed the stories.

We see this also with the stories passed around in France–fairies who swoop in to save the day when women themselves can’t do so; romantic tales of young girls who marry beasts as a balm to those young ladies facing arranged marriages to older, distant dukes. We see this with the removal of fairies and insertion of religion into the German tales. Fairy tales, in short, are not created in a vacuum. As with all stories, they change and bend both with and in response to culture.”
― Amanda Leduc, Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
― C.S. Lewis

“Once we have accepted the story, we cannot escape the story's fate.”
― P.L. Travers

“But all fairytales have rules, and perhaps it’s their rules that actually distinguish one fairytale from the other. These rules never need to be understood. They only need to be followed. If not, what they promise won’t come true.”
― Jostein Gaarder, The Orange Girl

“Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own “real” world in a fresh and truth-bearing light.”
― Leonard S. Marcus, The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy

“Fairytales by nature only talk about the victors. The survivors. Nobody speaks about what happens to those who failed, except in the abstract: as cautionary tales to guide others onto the path to success. How many brave knights fell to the dragon before he was slayed by the noble prince? How many children burned to a crisp and eaten before the wicked witch received her due? These stories are lost, but the lesson behind them is not: it is not enough to be merely pure and good.”
― Nenia Campbell, Evergloom

“Fairytales are healthy for the children. As they grow up, the magical thinking wears off, but the fairytale-induced creative brain circuits stay forever.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“There is wisdom to be found in fairytales, a deeper meaning in the magic of their worlds”
― Suzy Davies

“Mortals aren't born strong, they become strong.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Stepsister

“If fairy-story as a kind is worth reading at all it is worthy to be written for and read by adults. They will, of course, put more in and get more out than children can. Then, as a branch of a genuine art, children may hope to get fairy-stories fit for them to read and yet within their measure; as they may hope to get suitable introductions to poetry, history, and the sciences. Though it may be better for them to read some things, especially fairy-stories, that are beyond their measure rather than short of it. Their books like their clothes should allow for growth, and their books at any rate should encourage it.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays

“The best lies stay close to the truth.”
― Cornelia Funke, Reckless

“We are all taught that the most beautiful part of a fairytale is “happily ever after”. But we fail to notice that all fairy tales begin with “Once upon a time”. Once. It all happened. It was all real. Once.”
― Neha Bindal, Table for One

“Wherever you go and whatever you do, if you're not having fun then it isn't for you!”
― Ariadne Appletree

“Fairy Tales give you more than just smile.
They give you Hope.
Hope that at the end true love conquers all odds and slays every dragon.”
― Ameya Agrawal

“If you read fairy tales carefully, you’ll notice they are mostly about people who aren’t heroes. They don’t have special powers, or gifts. Often they are despised as stupid, They are bullied, beaten up, robbed, starved. But they find they are stronger than their misfortunes.”
― Amanda Craig, In a Dark Wood

“If we believe faeries are real, it brings a sense of magic to our very boring, difficult, everyday lives. It gives us a glimpse into a world of adventure, heroism, true love, and happy endings.

It inspires us to pull a little magic out of ourselves, and bestow it on others.”
― Daley Downing, Dreamings and Muses

“How often must I get lost in a strange land of fairytales so that I can find my true self?”
― Debasish Mridha

“Fairytale: presents impossible events under possible or almost impossible conditions as though they were possible.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections

“You never know what you're gonna find when you look under those covers - grandma or the wolf.”
― Betsy Schow, Spelled

“We all have a choice—to be monsters or men. It is not a matter of blood, but a condition of the heart.”
― Elizabeth D. Marie, Saving Beauty

“Fairytales teach children that the world is fraught with danger, including life-threatening danger; but by being clever (always), honest (as a rule, but with common-sense exceptions), courteous (especially to the elderly, no matter their apparent social station), and kind (to anyone in obvious need), even a child can succeed where those who seem more qualified have failed.

And this precisely what children most need to hear.

To let them go on believing that the world is safe, that they will be provided for and achieve worthwhile things even if they remain stupid, shirk integrity, despise courtesy, and act only from self-interest, that they ought to rely on those stronger, smarter, and more able to solve their problems, would be the gravest disservice: to them, and to society as a whole.

-On the Supposed Unsuitability of Fairytales for Children”
― J. Aleksandr Wootton

“The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us.”
― Neil Bartlett, Skin Lane

“A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy.”
― Stephen Sondheim, Look, I Made a Hat: Collected Lyrics, 1981-2011, With Attendant Comments, Amplifications, Dogmas, Harangues, Digressions, Anecdotes, and Miscellany

“Fairy tales make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water. a”
― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“Here's what all the stories forget to mention; life goes on around the cursed.”
― Laura Greenwood, Awakening

“The more stories I study, the more I begin to suspect that there is only one story, and that we are, all of us, engaged in telling it.”
― J. Aleksandr Wootton, Her Unwelcome Inheritance

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
― Dr. Seuss

“Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It's a way of understanding it.”
― Lloyd Alexander

“Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.”
― Dr. Seuss