Folktales Quotes

“Finally, I’d say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don’t be afraid to be superstitious. If you have a lucky pen, use it. If you speak with more force and wit when wearing one red sock and one blue one, dress like that. When I’m at work I’m highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale, and that we tell it more successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what’s more, they’re completely amoral: like the air-spirits who helped Strong Hans escape from the cave, the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever has the ring, whoever is telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to tell a story is a human imagination, I reply, ‘Of course, and this is the way my imagination works.”
― Philip Pullman, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version

“Aye, you're neither one thing nor yet quite t'other. Pity, but there 'tis.”
― Eloise Jarvis McGraw

“Fairies or Fae or Fey are Magical Creatures entrenched into the folklore of Chinese Culture as old as the Dragon.”
― Kailin Gow

“[A] folktale can never be forgotten because it wriggles and rearranges until it sits neatly on the heart. It is fluid and changing, able to adapt to whatever setting it finds itself in. It shifts in the mouth of every teller and adapts to the shape of each listener's ear. The facts can change (place names, the color of a character's woolen coat, the particular flowers in a small, circular garden), but the core remains the same. So the folktale survives. Assimilates. And with it--so survives the memory.”
― GennaRose Nethercott, Thistlefoot

“If a story does its job, it doesn't ever end. Not really. But it can change. This is the nature of folktales. They shift to fit each teller. Take whatever form suits the bearer best. What begins as a story of sorrow can be acknowledged, held like a sweetheart to the chest, rocked and sung to. And then it can be set down to sleep. It can become an offering. A lantern. An ember to lead you through the dark.”
― GennaRose Nethercott, Thistlefoot

“Folktales are full of such coincidences that are never coincidences at all, but the brittle games of powerful forces.”
― Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Gods of Jade and Shadow

“Folk art is, indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved into the lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Celtic Twilight

“These were young people having their fun. Old age comes quickly. If you don’t enjoy life at that time, you will never get another chance. At our age you only get afflictions.”
― Xavior Romearo-Frias

“It wasn’t like this in the stories. In the old tales, when a young man went forth to have adventures, he endured his trials and came forth triumphant. He became a leader, or acquired a magical skill, or at the very least wed a princess. Maybe all three. There was never any question, not even in the darkest moment, that the hero would conquer both his enemies and his self-doubt. Perhaps that was why I had been angry with Simon, because I wanted the ending of his story to be the good one he deserved.”
― Juliet Marillier, Daughter of the Forest

“A beverage of leisure is a serious business,” Shane Bowermaster was known to declare. “There can be no product of pleasure without the inverse on the end of the producer.”
― Jeff Phillips, Whiskey Pike: A Bedtime Story for the Drinking Mankind

“There were good places and bad places to tell stories and there were of course stories that could not be told in any place on earth and these were reserved for heaven. ”
― Gerald Hausman, Not Since Mark Twain - Stories: Newly Revised

“Folklores are inspired by truth but coloured with fantasy.”
― Niranjan Mudholkar, The Kingdom of God

“When two kindred souls meet, a confluence forms that joins them in an ancient and eternal way. (Dru)”
― Robin Craig Clark, Heart of the Earth: A Fantastic Mythical Adventure of Courage and Hope, Bound by a Shared Destiny

“There is no better gift than giving one a chance to smile through, his or her book”
― Shiju H Pallithazheth, Katashi Tales

“His gaze was different – it was like the narration of a thousand heavenly folktales.”
― Tshetrim Tharchen, A Play of the Cosmos: Script of the Stars

“SELKIE
Alone, the cold body of the selkie man lay upon the sand, so like the drowned one the widow had called for.
For her longing, he was hauled upon the sand, exposed to the moonlight.
The selkie strained in fraught movements and human form broke from the gleaming seal fur.
Undeniably he bore the image of the widow’s lost husband and spoke with the sounds of the dead man’s voice.
She hailed back from the rocks.
Shadows accumulating beyond the moon’s ability to reform.
Colours were washed from sight and silver crashed through her, colder than snow dreams of being.
In the dark, the ocean became the rolling flanks of a great beast drifting back across the horizon.
Out deep soon, the land’s drop sharp.”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“I was made of weeds and dark water and unbreakable ice. I was not made to loose.”
― Lyra Selene, A Feather So Black

“How can you be a strong leader of men if you cower away from your own truth?”
― Alannah K. Pearson, Bone Arrow

“A book is the only shuttle service that carries one safely to another dimension and back”
― Vishal Singh, The Himalayan Kingdoms

“Le fiabe sono vere/Folktales are are real”
― Italo Calvino, ANTOLOGÍA DE CUENTOS ITALIANOS: Edmundo de Amicis, Giovanni Boccaccio, Alberto Moravia, Dino Buzzati, Italo Calvino, Cesare Pavese, Franco Sacchetti (Grandes Antologías nº 9)

“The tall cityscape that was Anchorage encroached on the wide skies. It was like a giant walking and uninhabited, unclaimed land.”
― Suzy Davies, The Girl in The Red Cape

“Crouching sadly beneath the bush, all of Forethought’s excitement began to drain away. He was in the act of turning around when he heard a little buzzing voice say, 'Don’t stop now! Just keep going. You’re almost their rabbit!”
― Bobby B-Bobby, Just Keep Going Rabbit

“Central to the stories in which people featured, was the bond of love with the concomitants: duty, obedience, responsibility, honor, and orderliness; always orderliness. Like the seasons of the year, life was depicted full of cause and effect, predictability and order; connectedness and oneness.”
― Sindiwe Magona, To My Children's Children

“Gathering eir courage, e bowed and placed the basket of honey and fine handspun yarns at the witch's feet.
'I know who you are and what you seek,' the witch said in a deep melodious voice. 'It is inside my home. Take your cloak and go inside. When you find what you want, you will know the price you must pay.”
― Cedar McCloud, The Thread That Binds

“What brand of squirrel whiskey you been drinkin'?' scoffed Moon Hennessey.”
― James Cloyd Bowman, Pecos Bill: The Greatest Cowboy of All Time

“Now hear me. Before the end,
you will pluck snowdrops at
midwinter, die by your own
choosing, and weep for a
nightingale.”
― Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale

“I’d forgive you for not having an inkling of who I am if you glimpsed me from a distance. You have your own idea of what a Gypsy is, I’m sure. We all make instant judgements. ’Tis our second thoughts that count. But I’m confident you’d be wrong with first, and second, impressions.”
― E. L. Parfitt, A Gypsy's Curse

“The Fairy Story (or Folk-tale if you prefer that name) has at any rate been altered: for in this case it has been welded into the 'history'. And not, I think, for the first time by our poet. Beowulf and the Monster were already grafted onto the court of Heorot before ever he made this poem. But however it was done, by one poet or a succession of them, it caused great changes not only of detail but of tone. And it did not leave the history unaffected. You have only to consider how different is magic, faerie, and the like when it takes place in the court of Camelot in the time of Arthur, that are placed in history and geography, from a mere fairy-tale; and how different is the atmosphere of Arthur's court for all its atmosphere of 'history' because of this fairy-element, to understand what I mean.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell

“Folk-tales and ballads conceive of Elfland with a different notion of time to our own. Its people mirror the activities of our world as if to mock or distort them, and to our eyes seem immortal. They affect our world, bringing benefit or harm, but these results are not consonant with our rules, and may resemble the arbitrary operation of luck or chance. Although men may interact with these folk, they can neither understand nor trust them.

The Border Ballads in general are ready to accommodate similtaneously a theology of expiation, reward and punishment, and an Elfland which has no moral imperatives, and interpenetrates our own in unpredictable ways, even inserting off-spring among us by means of the changeling.”
― J.B. Pick, The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction

“Among curious rubbish you will find sound sense if you look for it. You will find the creed of the people, as shewn in their stories, to be, that wisdom and courage, though weak, may overcome strength, and ignorance, and pride: that the most despised is often the most worthy; that small beginnings lead to great results. You will find perseverance, frugality, and filial piety rewarded; pride, greed and laziness punished... That you may go on acquiring knowledge, selecting the good, and rejecting the evil; that you, like Conal in the story, may gather gold, and escape unharmed from the giant's land, is the earnest wish of your affectionate Kinsman.”
― John Francis Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, Volume 1