Traditional Tales Quotes

“so that it isn't upsetting to anybody. It's something we've always known about fairy tales – they talk about incest, the Oedipus complex, about psychotic mothers, like those of Snow White and Hansel and Gretel, who throw their children out. They tell things about life which children know instinctively, and the pleasure and relief lie in finding these things expressed in language that children can live with. You can't eradicate these feelings – they exist and they're a great source of creative inspiration.”
― Maurice Sendak

“A traditionalist’s values are gleaned from all that is good in the past.”
― Fennel Hudson, Traditional Angling: Fennel's Journal No. 6

“Tell me my little children, what crime has this lizard committed that it must die this evening?” There was silence. In raising my head like a joke, I tried to laugh. That was the same time I realized that grandma was dead serious with us.Pg.26”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Still Owing Me Goodbye

“The feast was seen everywhere and in everything. Some women in semi-dresses were busy doing many things at once. Domestic animals were crying their last, with knives on their throats. They too were celebrating the feast in their own ways.Pg.93”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Still Owing Me Goodbye

“Twenty good friends cannot live together in twenty good years”. We were more than twenty who left the school and the simple statement was beginning to echo hard in my ear, as if grandma actually had that particular day in mind. Pg.100”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Still Owing Me Goodbye

“Grandma; it was to grandma I truly wanted to have returned, but she was no more. I could only remember the day she died. The tears mother shed on me, as if I was going to face a more difficult world than any other member of our family. Pg.100”
― Obehi Peter Ewanfoh, Still Owing Me Goodbye

“An hour later, a group of men from the funeral home arrived. With my grandfather's help, they cleaned my grandmother's body and marinated it in rice alcohol. When the wine had straightened her limbs, which had stiffened from rigor mortis, they dressed her in new clothes. Using a thick red thread, they tied her two big toes together to prevent her spirit from wandering.
A cheap red lacquered coffin was brought into my grandparents' bedroom. A layer of sand was spread at the bottom to cushion the body. Rich families would use tea leaves instead of sand. The more expensive the tea, the richer and higher in status the dead were. We covered the sand with coarse, loosely woven cotton gauze. After my grandmother's body was laid inside the coffin, a small dish filled with burning oil was placed on the ground beneath it to keep her spirit warm. Incense in a large urn perfumed the air. It was time for friends and relatives to pay their respects.”
― Kien Nguyen, The Unwanted: A Memoir of Childhood