Imagine a perfect world

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...

f you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a...

It must be understood that in some cases the process by which a god or goddess degenerates into a fairy may occupy centuries, and that in the passage of generations such an alteration may be...

So how did it go? I sat on the toilet and ran a hand over my hair. Um… it’s still going, I whispered.It’s still going? Then what are you doing calling me?Well… it’s just that…What?How...

An intelligent enemy,’ he would say, stroking his beard as if it were a bristly pet, ‘rather than a foolish friend.’ Or, ‘He learnt the language of pigeons, and forgot his own.’ Or, the favourite...

Most have been forgotten. Most deserve to be forgotten. The heroes will always be remembered. The best. The best and the worst. And a few who were a bit of both.

It was Stevenson, I think, who most notably that there are some places that simply demand a story should be told of them. …After all, perhaps Stevenson had only half of the matter. It is...

Allegorical stories of saints battling with giants, monsters and demons may be interpreted as symbolizing the Christian’s fight against paganism. At Bwlch Rhiwfelen (Denbigh) St Collen fought and killed a cannibal giantess, afterwards washing away...

In prehistoric times, early man was bowled over by natural events: rain, thunder, lightning, the violent shaking and moving of the ground, mountains spewing deathly hot lava, the glow of the moon, the burning heat...

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.

Never invite any kind of spirit to enter either your home or your person. This is an extremely important point to remember. To do so always risks to unwittingly invite evil spirits in, instead. Good...

You can take your gold, but afterwards, things are, things are flat. There is less beauty in a rainbow, less meaning in a sermon, less joy in a kiss…Less.

Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re...

The linguistic and literary reality of the biblical tradition is folkloristic in essence. The concept of a benei Israel … is a reflection of no sociopolitical entity of the historical state of Israel of the...

Thus Arthur achieved the adventure of the sword that day and entered into his birthright of royalty. Wherefore, may God grant His Grace unto you all that ye too may likewise succeed in your undertakings....

Never interrupt a faerie circle ceremony. And, if a faerie has appeared to you, visually, do not speak to it until it has spoken to you. These two transgressions are considered so rude, that the...

Had she believed all that? Old Pilar’s folklore? No, not really; or not exactly. Most likely Pilar hadn’t quite believed it either, but it was a reassuring story: that the dead were not entirely dead...

Often I felt that these men were play-acting: the unreality of their role was their security, even their own destinies were to them saga and folk-tale rather than a private matter; these were men under...

The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and...

Increase Mather, President of Harvard University, in his treatise on Remarkable Providences, insists that the smell of herbs alarms the Devil and that medicine expels him. Such beliefs have probably even now not wholly disappeared...

I have a very clear memory of my first encounter with myth, sitting in a mobile library and travelling, at the same time, with Theseus on the road to Athens. By the time we’d met,...

The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.

Can’t we make a blusterer ourselves? asked Jón Hreggviðsson. Can’t we scratch that damned sign with the ax-point onto the chopping block and get a beautiful, chubby woman in here tonight, right now-or preferably three?...

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.

Our house was an old Tudor mansion. My father was very particular in keeping the smallest peculiarities of his home unaltered. Thus the many peaks and gables, the numerous turrets, and the mullioned windows with...

If I can get them to read, they do. I tell them: Stories are important.” And then he looked at me and smiled.

I knew by the signs it would be a hard winter. The hollies bore a heavy crop of berries and birds stripped them bare. Crows quarreled in reaped fields and owls cried in the mountains,...

My view of writing “Coldest Girl in Coldtown” was to take every single thing that I loved from every vampire book I had ever read and dump it into one book–everything I like–trying to evoke...

It would be dreadfullyironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemedappropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes...

Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused — hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our...

Spooky things, people, places, scents and sounds together or alone can create a powerful adrenalin rush and it floods the senses.

I really love folklore. I had read a lot of faerie folklore that informed the books I wrote. I also really love vampire folklore; my eighth grade research paper was on [it]. [With this project,]...

She knew him as much as the knowing of her own heart’s secret: she was destined for the forest.

Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth...

How different this world to the one about which I used to read, and in which I used to live! This is one peopled by demons, phantoms, vampires, ghouls, boggarts, and nixies. Names of things...

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read “Interview With the Vampire” a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel’s backstory] definitely came from those books:...

There is scarce a cave, an isolated rock, a lone pine tree or a pile of stones without supporting folklore.

Beer gurgled through the beard. ‘You see,’ the young man began, ‘the desert’s so big you can’t be alone in it. Ever notice that? It’s all empty and there’s nothing in sight, but there’s always...

I’ve been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things — like George Macdonald’s 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B....

All it takes, is one leap of faith.

Early Summer, loveliest season, The world is being colored in. While daylight lasts on the horizon, Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing. The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.”Welcome, summer” is what he says. Winter’s unimaginable. The wood’s a wickerwork...

Oh, yes,” Lin said.

Fairy tales are more than moral lessons and time capsules for cultural commentary; they are natural law. The child raised on folklore will quickly learn the rules of crossroads and lakes, mirrors and mushroom rings....

If you take myth and folklore, and these things that speak in symbols, they can be interpreted in so many ways that although the actual image is clear enough, the interpretation is infinitely blurred, a...

The odor of burning sulphur shifted on the night air, acrid, a little foul. Somewhere, the Canaan dwellers had learned of a supplier of castor – an extract from the beaver’s perineal glands. Little packets...