Bluebeard Quotes & Sayings

What are blue-stockings?' asked Tommy.
Naturally you don't know,' replied the other. 'If you did, you would sympathize more with Bluebeard. They were ladies who were always reading books. They even read them aloud. — G.K. Chesterton

He was the kind of boy for whom cleverness was female. — Margaret Atwood

The Bluebeard's terrible parting gift had been to make desire rhyme with death and fear. — Cornelia Funke

The wardrobe threw open her doors. Inside were a few interesting things- one of the largest, clearest mirrors Belle had ever seen, some moths, and an extremely pretty collection of gowns that would have made the blond triplets, Paulette, Claudette, and Laurette, swoon.
Belle examined the dresses skeptically. Of course, if things went the way they did in fairy tales, they would all fit her perfectly. The question was, was this a "Bluebeard's Wives" situation? Or something else? — Liz Braswell

But behind each player sttod a line of ghosts unable to win. Eve. Ashputtel. Marilyn Monroe. Rapunzel slashing wildly at her hair. Bessie Smith unloved and down and out. Bluebeard's wives, Henry VIII's, Snow White cursing the day she left the seven dwarves, Diana, Princess of Wales. The Sheepish Beast came in with a tray of schnapps at the end of the game and we stood for the toast -"fay wray"- then tossed our fiery drinks to the back of our crimson throats. Bad girls. Serious ladies. Mourning our dead. — Carol Ann Duffy

It was not the time to recall all those really horrifying nursery stories she'd read, Bluebeard, Babes in the Wood, Little Red Riding Hood. Why is it that children's stories are so filled with monsters like wolves and witches who eat children, and men who kill their wives? And to think, that people actually sat and told their children such things. — Karen Ranney

And what is literature, Rabo," he said, "but an insider's newsletter about affairs relating to molecules, of no importance to anything in the universe but a few molecules who have the disease called 'thought'. — Kurt Vonnegut

The One Forbidden Thing. Remember Bluebeard, who says to his wife, "Don't open that closet"? And then one always disobeys. In the Old Testament story God points out the one forbidden thing. Now, God must have known very well that man was going to eat the forbidden fruit. But it was by doing that that man became the initiator of his own life. Life really began with that act of disobedience. — Joseph Campbell

The fairy tale that really scared me was Bluebeard. That's the one where he just kills one after another of these woman, these wives, that he lures up to the castle. I just think about fairy tales as stories women told their children to warn them? To keep them safe, to make sure they married up, all the things that would have safeguarded them in the olden days. — Meryl Streep

I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to me I am sending back the key; in his eye's darkroom I can see my X-rayed heart, dissected body: I am sending back the key that let me into bluebeard s study. — Sylvia Plath

Bluebeard, who said to Scottland Yard, How do I know how many wives I've killed? I'm not an accountant! Never got a dinner! — Red Buttons

I find two welcome hair ties at the same time in my bag and quickly tie my hair in pigtails. Yes! The more girly I look perhaps the safer I'll be from Bluebeard. — E.L. James

He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed. — Margaret Atwood

What thumbsuckers we all are ... when it comes to mothers. — Margaret Atwood

Belief is nearly the whole of the universe whether based on truth or not. — Kurt Vonnegut

Painters
and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians, they are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday! — Kurt Vonnegut

If he is so evil, why are we standing here watching him?" Sabrina said.
"Cause I'm trying to get up the courage to go over and asking for an autograph," Puck said. — Michael Buckley

As his dark closet shows, Bluebeard was a collector at heart, and even after dispatching a wife, could not let her fully depart. — Shuli Barzilai

I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian] — Kurt Vonnegut

That was an ordinary way for a patriotic American to talk back then. It's hard to believe how sick of war we used to be.[ ... ]We used to call armaments manufacturers "Merchants of Death."
Can you imagine that?
Nowadays, of course, just about our only solvent industry is the merchandising of death, bankrolled by our grandchildren, so that the message of our principal art forms, movies and television and political speeches and newspaper columns, for the sake of the economy, simply has to be this: War is hell, all right, but the only way a boy can become a man is in a shoot-out of some kind, preferably, but by no means necessarily, on a battlefield. — Kurt Vonnegut

Marriage was like death. You knew it'd happen eventually, but it wasn't something you dwelt on. — T. Kingfisher