our situation reminded me of a fable I had read somewhere. Chased by a tiger, a man slips and falls over the edge of a mountain. As he falls, he manages to grab a bush growing by the side of the mountain and hangs on to it for dear life. The bush is laden with...

How can I tell a story we already know too well? Her name was Africa. His was France. He colonized her, exploited her, silenced her, and even decades after it was supposed to have ended, still acted with a high hand in resolving her affairs in places like Côte d’Ivoire, a name she had been...

Nostalgia is a necessary thing, I believe, and a way for all of us to find peace in that which we have accomplished, or even failed to accomplish. At the same time, if nostalgia precipitates actions to return to that fabled, rosy-painted time, particularly in one who believes his life to be a failure, then...

. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity.

Painful memories, they can mend,love’s powerful, but it can rend,through the treacherous act of jealousy.A passion that seeks to destroy,the soul when it deploys,the vicious sin that is envy.Take heed my friends,when contemplating the endof an imagined rival for the heart’s true amour.Acts of envy bode not well,for they cast an evil spell,and in the...

SAINT, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

Somebody’s been feeding the boy fables. Probably the king’s niece. Humph. Nice girl. Too many romantic notions, though.

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man...

Science has never killed or persecuted a single person for doubting or denying its teaching, and most of these teaching have been true; but religion has murdered millions for doubting or denying her dogmas and most of these dogmas have been false.All stories about gods and devils, of heavens and hells, as they do not...

Lo sconosciuto sbadigliò nel sonno e si rigirò, scoprendosi fino all’inguine. Era davvero un giovane ragazzo. Il viso, sporco e provato, possedeva le fattezze di un angelo, la chioma color del grano ricadeva morbidamente sulle spalle, conferendogli un’aria quasi soave e le labbra ben disegnate, davano l’impressione di essere morbide e succose come una pesca...

Combien de choses nous servoyent hier d’articles de foy, qui nous sont fables aujourd’huy?How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

The priest’s lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal’s doom. My grandmother’s lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being...

Without stories, we’d have even more trouble recognizing what’s real.

Wrath crawled out from the well,on direction from Hell,to get back what it once lost.With vengeance in mind,it set out to find,a specified soul to accost.When the Hell-well beckoned,Mother’s will now reckoned,her dead soul now wholly enslaved.Embodied in a rotting husk,the corpse reeked of putrid musk,her being wholly depraved.

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a...

‎They are angry with me, because I know what I am.” Said the little eagle. “How do you know that they are angry with you?” “Because, they despise me for wanting to soar, they only want me to peck at the dirt, looking for ants, with them. But I can’t do that. I don’t have...

Baba Yaga: “… What are his powers”Mirror on the wall: “He reads

I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting. …It does not hurt them to read about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. Nor do I think they should read only about things that they understand. ‘…a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.’ So...

But is the unicorn a falsehood? It’s the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as...

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

Names are what you can hear or see, but cannot smell or touch. I don’t need a name, as name stand for things they are not, and I am what all names stand for. If you gave me a name, it would mean that we are separate, you and I, when we are not.- The...

Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In...