Fairy tales, fantasy, legend and myth…these stories, and their topics, and the symbolism and interpretation of those topics…these things have always held an inexplicable fascination for me,” she writes. “That fascination is at least in...

The fairy tale belongs to the poor…I know of no fairy tale which upholds the tyrant, or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairy tale is an absurdity.

They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they...

I turned into Little Red Riding Hood. I made a cake, packed it up and went through the forest until I met the wolves. That’s something the story got wrong, wolves don’t travel solo, they...

I’ve discovered as I’ve grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you’re a kid. It isn’t just a straightforward fairytale.

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.

That’s it? That’s all that happens after you topple from grace? We lose our rubies and rations?” Marshall smirked. “Woe is me.

at the center of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power.

Fear isn’t so difficult to understand. After all, weren’t we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same...

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the...

Think what you would have been now, if instead of being fed with tales and old wives’ fables in childhood, you had been crammed with geography and natural history!

Gardens are made of darkness and light entwined.

If there is one ‘constant’ in the structure and theme of the wonder tale, it is transformation.

You’ve honey on your tongue, ma fifille,” Maman once said. “If you’d lived in earlier times, you could have been a troubadour.””…There aren’t any troubadours any more, are there, Maman?” Marie said. “And if there...

I’m glad she’s so smitten with her new huntsman boyfriend and all, but venison-wurst? Gag me with a harpsichord.

You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.

Luna had told us not to drop the rose, not to leave the path. But we never dropped the rose – it was on me the whole time – and we didn’t leave the path,...

Contemporary writers use animal-transformation themes to explore issues of gender, sexuality, race, culture, and the process of transformation…just as storytellers have done, all over the world, for many centuries past. One distinct change marks modern...

The Dreamer awakesThe shadow goes byThe tale I have told you,That tale is a lie.But listen to me,Bright maiden, proud youthThe tale is a lie;What it tells is the truth.

I haven’t finished revisiting Sleeping Beauty. As a faerie tale, that one is rife with inherent difficulties. After all, the world doesn’t stop just because one person is asleep.

One evening, after a particularly terrible row, the prince smashed his princess over the head with an old wooden clock and she tumbled to the floor, dead.

Some foolish people must have a tragedy, for they cannot believe in happy endings

She talks like you. It’s not every day you hear a four-year-old say Prince Charming is a douchebag who’s only holding Cinderella back.” “That’s my girl.

And those women were sneaky. They understood that including fantastical elements in their tales- golden eggs, signing harps, talking frogs- worked to mask a deeper purpose….it made the stories look on the surface like ‘a...

When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits,...

The happily ever after thing. It’s great when she marries the prince or whatever and they say that. But they just don’t show the part where there’s a revolution and they drag her to the...

I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker...

OMG. He’s a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He’s the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket...

The merging of characteristics between different species creates a very powerful language, one that I love to explore through my art, enabling me to tap into the unconscious.

When your heart is broken, it’s easier to follow rules

Foxbrush sneezed again.He couldn’t help himself. It’s not something a fellow likes to do when a stunningly beautiful woman is leaning toward him with an expression on her face like Nidawi’s wore. But sneezes are...

I tell them: don’t depend on a woodsman in the third act. I tell them: look for sets of three, or seven. I tell them: there’s always a way to survive. I tell them: you...

You’re too old for fairy tales,” Baasen said.

I’ll kill you,” I could afford a better apartment. You can only listen to so many threats of destruction, doom, or death before you start tuning them all out. So I followed the wolf out...

You see, none of these conflicts are about things that people only sort of like. It is always about love. You may think me blasphemous to use the Passion of the Christ as an example...

I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.

If you like the fairy tales, visit the old towns!

Did you recently turn into a jerk or have you been one since birth?

Am I really standing here, conversing with a bloody unicorn?” Tiffy was certain her mind had finally left the building.

The middle son gets a magic donkey. When you shout the word: “Bricklebrit!”, it spews gold pieces out of…And I quote:… its front and back.Yes, folks. Thing I Love #4: the Bricklebrit Donkey. You shout...

That’s why we’re out here. We were hoping Jimmi would bring enough damsels for us all, though!

Little Red Riding Hood was stalked; Cinderella was abused; the Beauty had to live with a hideous Beast; Snow White was poisoned; Hansel and Gretel were meat for a cannibal… and then we wonder why...

There is a kind of truth in everything, even fairytales. In fact, especially in fairytales… The King understood it as he looked out from the roof of the Temple and saw the clouds flying past...

She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don’t dreams in fairy...

Everything beautiful is golden and strewn with pearls. Even golden people live here. But misfortune is a dark power, a monstrous, cannibalistic giant, who is, however, vanquished, because a good woman, who happily knows how...

Once upon a time – for that is how all stories should begin – there was a boy who lost his mother.

May you never grow too old to believe in magic and fairy tales.

That’s the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you’re entitled to live it. So far, though, it...

Everyone thinks of them in terms of poisoned apples and glass coffins, and forgets that they represent girls who walked into dark forests and remade them into their own reflections.

Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while...