Fairy Tale Story Quotes & Sayings

For me, any fiction of nobles and swords necessarily has to be a story of corruption, injustice and savagely violent conflict - because any other treatment is going to have all the heft and realistic honesty of a bedtime fairy tale for five year olds. — Richard K. Morgan

What do you know of the Knights?" he asked.

Fin shrugged. "I thought knights were only in children's stories until a few days ago."

Jeannot smiled. "A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance."

"Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren't true. You might be knights, but I don't see any shining armor," Fin said.

Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. "Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run. — A.S. Peterson

Not every fairy tale story that begins with 'Once upon a time,' has a 'Happily ever after' ... — Khalia Hades

I'm so excited to see 'Horns' because it's so many different genres in one film. It's a sci-fi, it's a love story, it's a horror movie, it's a fairy tale. — Juno Temple

For the story that shapes a child's universe also shapes the child - and by the child, the man thereafter. The memory of a burning fairy tale can govern behavior as truly as remembered fire will caution against fire forever. - WALTER WANGERIN — Sarah Arthur

Children delight in folk-tale and fairy lore, but the very little child loves best the story which mirrors the familiar. And it is for him, and for the mother who is striving in this age of profusion to guard the innate simplicity of her child's nature, that I have written my little stories. — Maud Lindsay

She walks into my life legs first, a long drink of water in the desert of my thirties. Her shoes are red; her eyes are green. She's an Italian flag in occupied territory, and I fall for her like Paris. She mixes my metaphors like a martini and serves up my heart tartare. They all do. Every time. They have to. It's that kind of story. — Catherynne M Valente

All children grow up, all but one. His name is Peter and by now, all the civilized world has heard of him. He has captured the public imagination and become a legend, a subject for poets, philosophers and psychologists to write about, and for children to dream of. The children's tales might be lacking in some details, but on the whole they are more accurate than most other accounts, for children will always understand Peter intuitively, as I did when I first met him.

"I shall endeavor to tell you the true story of my friend Peter, because he cannot tell it to you himself. Afterward I hope you will love him and defend him as I have for the remainder of your days. Pass on to others a true account of the wild boy who would not grow up, who danced with kings and won the hearts of princesses. He defied logic and reason, lived and loved with an innocent heart, and found peace in the midst of a turbulent world. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

Every fairy tale starts the same: Once upon a time, Maybe that's why we love them so much. We all get to be a part of that story. Just by existing, you get your once upon a time. It's part of the deal. What's not part of the deal, it turns out, is the happily ever after. — Katie Alexander

We build our understanding of the emotional world through the myths and legends of our culture. We are all, in part, made of fairy tales. — Will Storr

As in most fairy tales, there's a prince and a princess, dragons and some magic, and the feeling it gives you that anything is possible if we could stay this way forever. — Crystal Woods

When the bald associate had mentioned a sleeping beauty, he was referring to a fairy tale that you have probably heard one thousand times. Like all fairy tales, the story of Sleeping Beauty begins with 'Once upon a time,' and continues with a foolish young princess who makes a witch very angry, and then takes a nap until her boyfriend wakes her up with a kiss and insists on getting married, at which point the story ends with the phrase 'happily ever after.' The story is usually illustrated with fancy drawings of the napping princess, who always looks very glamorous and elegant, with her hair neatly combed and a long silk gown keeping her comfortable as she snores away for years and years. — Lemony Snicket

It sounds cheesy but I think my life's kinda like a fairy tale. I worked really hard, but I'm very, very lucky too. I'm just 16 and I've done so many amazing things. I travel the world, I have fans who support me, and I get to do what I love - make movies, sing and really be myself. I have a beautiful family, a great support system, and wonderful friends - and I go shopping every week! I'm so lucky, but it's not necessarily like a CINDERELLA STORY. — Hilary Duff

I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based. — Erin Morgenstern

Here's a story of a girl
Who grew up lost and lonely
Thinking love was fairy tale
And trouble was made only for me
Even in the darkness every color can be found
And every day of rain brings
Water flowing
To things growing in the ground
Grief replaced with pity
For a city barely coping
Dreams are easy to achieve
If hope is all I'm hoping to be
Any time you're hurt
There's one who has it worse around
And every drop of rain will keep you growing
Seeds you're sowing in the ground — Joss Whedon

Perhaps the only happily ever after is to survive to tell the story — Kat Howard

I was his "little girl with the William Burroughs mind," his "secret fairy," "female Frank Zappa" and "window onto a magical world." He said I fell to earth, leaving wing-marks on the ceilings of our dreams. — Jalina Mhyana

The discovery of eternal inflation has radically transformed our understanding of what's out there in space on the largest scales. Now I can't help but feel that our old story sounds like a fairy tale, with its single narrative in a simple sequence: "Once upon a time, there was inflation. Inflation made our Big Bang. Our Big Bang made galaxies." Figure 5.7 illustrates why this story is too naive: it yet again repeats our human mistake of assuming that all we know of so far is all that exists. We see that even our Big Bang is just a small part of something much grander, a treelike structure that's still growing. In other words, what we've called our Big Bang wasn't the ultimate beginning, but rather the end-of inflation in our part of space. — Max Tegmark

It was a story they could tell their children, something out of a fairy tale. How their mother had not known who he was when she accepted him, and the frog turned out to be a prince. But the princess had been unwilling to kiss the frog, the prince remained warty and unloved, and now there was no adventure to be had. — Melissa De La Cruz

Once upon a time there was a girl who was special. This is not her story. Unless you count the part where I killed her. — R. J. Anderson

Think of me,' she said because it seemed like something a girl in a fairy tale might say. Think of me. Remember me. Love me. Turn me into a story you tell again and again. The sister who was good as gold and became a queen. — Jennifer McMahon

Once upon a time--which, when you come to think of it, is really
the only proper way to begin a story--the only way that really
smacks of romance and fairyland-- — L.M. Montgomery

It's almost a sort of fairy story tale, just what a novelist would write about a discovery. — Charles Hard Townes

At the center of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power. — Susan Wiggs

But life isn't a fairy tale which ends 'happily ever after' just because the last line of the story is written. Hurts have to heal, resentments have to fade, trusts have to mend. — Rasana Atreya

In a fairy tale, the story can't be altered. The prince and princess will never have a fight. You'll never hear the queen raise her voice. No on ever gets sick; no one ever gets hurt. Maybe love is only safe in places where it can't change. — Jodi Picoult

I will tell you, too, that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts or minds, an Empress as well as the woman who does her laundry ... Perhaps it is that a shoemaker's daughter can bear restraint less easily than an aristocrat, that what he can bear for three years she can endure only for three days ... Or perhaps my moral is that our desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy tale. — Theodora Goss

'Seconds' is grounded in the reality of this restaurant environment, and I did do plenty of research, so there's that. It takes place in a town that is like a kinder, gentler fairy tale version of reality. Then it takes off into a story that is very strange, very mental. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

He might have run off then, and thus avoided a great many adventures to come, but the girl cried, "Wait!" and he turned to face her. "Please," she implored from the window. "Don't go. Come with us. I promise you won't regret it."
For a moment, Peter stood in the road indecisively, staring into the girl's eyes as if trying to penetrate a great mystery. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence. Then, as I said, everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear a word about it. Even my fairy-tale books were taken away from me for a time - because I was too 'imaginative'. Eh! Yes, they did that! My father belonged to the old school ... And my story was driven back upon myself. I whispered it to my pillow - my pillow that was often damp and salt to my whispering lips with childish tears. And I added always to my official and less fervent prayers this one heartfelt request: 'Please God I may dream of the garden. O! take me back to my garden. — H.G.Wells

There's a rule for what makes good fantasy work, and it's as strange as any riddle ever posed in a fairy tale: In fantasy, you can do anything; and therefore, the one thing you must not do is 'just anything.' Why? Because in a story where anything can happen and anything can be true, nothing matters. You have no reason to care what happens. It's all arbitrary, and arbitrary isn't interesting. — Teresa Nielsen Hayden

And though the shadow of a sigh
May tremble through the story,
For "happy summer days" gone by,
And vanish'd summer glory
It shall not touch with breath of bale,
The pleasance of our fairy-tale. — Lewis Carroll

Grandpa had told him some of the same stories when he was a kid, and they weren't lies, exactly, but exaggerated versions of the truth - because the story of Grandpa Portman's childhood wasn't a fairy tale at all. It was a horror story. — Ransom Riggs

When the army doesn't come for you, when no one chooses to fight for you, when no one dives in after you with fairy tales and promises, you write a different story. You write a tale of adventure and chaos, of survival and fortitude, and instead of wishing to be saved, you save yourself. — Kelton Wright

Nobody said it had to be a story with an ending all neatly tied up like some ridiculous fairy tale. This story's true, and true stories don't have endings, because things just keep going. — Kate Milford

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 of drama, but not so: this is the one true story, the greatest story ever told, the tale of tales even as Christ is the King of Kings, and all truly inspired fairy tales and fiction have to contain some echo or reflection of the One True Tale, or else it is no tale of any power at all, merely a pastime.
The most powerful and potent tales, even when they are told awkwardly and without grace or poetry or craft, are stories of paradise lost and paradise regained; sacrifice, selfless love, forgiveness and salvation; stories of a man who learns better. — John C. Wright

Lena's real mom, Emily, knew that this was not the truth, but she also knew that Vaclav was not lying.
Vaclav knew that he was telling the truth.
Lena knew that it was a lie, but she loved it and believed it, like a fairy tale, like a song, like a bedtime story, like a magic trick.
She loved Vaclav until it became the truth and so it was. — Haley Tanner

I looked at the 1950 animated film [Cinderella], I read a couple of editions of the fairy tale that I have in my house and all of it seemed to say that there was room for a version that delivered, in this story, which seems to invite a feeling in p eopleand I think that is some version of a classical world. — Kenneth Branagh

Do you remember the fairy tale about the mermaid? A witch gave her legs, she could walk, but she felt like there were red hot knives stabbing into her feet all the time. That story's about us, Maxim! We always walk over sharp knives, and that's something you can never get used to. But Hans Christian Anderson didn't tell the whole story. The witch could have done things differently: the mermaid walks, and the knives stab other people. That's the way of the Dark. — Sergei Lukyanenko

In The End

In the end, the mountains of imagination were nothing
but a house.
And this grand life of mine was nothing but an excuse.
You've been hearing my story so patiently for a lifetime
Now hear this: it was nothing but a fairy tale. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Ah - now you think I have been lying to you, that this is only a story. It has a king in it. And while a story with Death might be true, a story with a king in it is always a fairy tale. But remember, this comes from a time when kings were as common as corn. Plant a field and you got corn. Plant a kingdom and you got a king. It is that simple. — Jane Yolen

I'd spent endless nights wishing things had been different - wishing that ours had been a fairy-tale story. But, it wasn't. It couldn't be. — Stephanie Connelley Worlton

Peter and the deer herd ranged over the forest together, and without words, Peter told the deer about his new life at the Palace, amongst people. The scents that lingered on him told a hundred stories. His expressions and movements too, echoed foreign influences. And in Peter's eyes, the story was told plainly. They sensed that he had grown not just physically, but in his being he was bigger, more mature.
The deer wanted the Wild Boy to return to the Enchanted Forest with them, but they were uncertain he would come. They called him by his forest name, and he replied, "Peter." The strangeness of this intonation puzzled them. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out. L. Frank Baum — L. Frank Baum

How I keep trying to force our story into a fairy tale, but from the beginning, it's been more like a nursery rhyme."
"Bizarre and adorable?"
"Just like you."
"With rings in your pockets and bells on your toes"
"Ooh, I should really invest in some toes bells. — Shannon Hale

The fairy tale of heaven, the promise that whatever shit happens, your story gets a happy ending. The Bible, boiled down: Once upon a time I helped some poor suckers out and someday, maybe, if you're good, I'll help you too, — John Joseph Adams

Trial Is Part of the Journey For a moment, think back about your favorite fairy tale. In that story the main character may be a princess or a peasant; she might be a mermaid or a milkmaid, a ruler or a servant. You will find one thing all have in common: they must overcome adversity. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

The FSG story starts to lose its fairy-tale aura when filthy lucre invades the sacred enclosure, as it did ubiquitously in the every-man-for-himself Reagan era. — Jonathan Galassi

I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually true ... There may be people who wish to live their lives under cradle-to-grave divine supervision, a permanent surveillance and monitoring. But I cannot imagine anything more horrible or grotesque. — Christopher Hitchens

The currency there is imagination; instead of buying something with coins, you buy it with a good story. Libraries aren't known as libraries but as "banks," and every fairy tale is worth a fortune. — Fredrik Backman

In his anti-Darwinian book ... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe ), Francis Hitching tells the story ... "The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation." Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a "classic case" nonetheless. — Stephen Jay Gould

Oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world. — G.K. Chesterton

I'd believed in that story, the story of us. It was still there,
that antiquated fairy tale notion. I was older now, though, and it was
time to let the fairy tale go. — Ute Carbone

Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch. — Hans Christian Andersen

The fairy tale is not the conclusion, but the doorway to a more brilliant reality. Pushed onto a pedestal as the final answer their worth is misshapen and distorted. The world's story may end with a couple living happily ever after but our life in Christ enables the intimacy of the human relationship to illuminate an eternal perfection. In a balanced perspective, neither denigrated nor exalted from their intended place, fairy tales are a lovely and exhilarating part of life. — Natalie Nyquist

A fairy tale," he says, "is a story we wish were true. — Tera Lynn Childs

But I'm collecting the story of his life. The real story.' Chronicler made a helpless gesture. 'Without the dark parts it's just some silly f - ' Chronicler froze halfway through the word, eyes darting nervously to the side.
Bast grinned like a child catching a priest midcurse. 'Go on,' he urged, his eyes were delighted, and hard, and terrible. 'Say it.'
Like some silly faerie story,' Chronicler finished, his voice thin and pale as paper.
Bast smiled a wide smile. 'You know nothing of the Fae, if you think our stories lack their darker sides. But all that aside, this is a faerie story, because you are gathering it for me. — Patrick Rothfuss

The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Reading is almost always subversive. From the time you read the next night's fairy tale under the covers by flashlight when you have already had your bedtime story from Daddy and are supposed to be asleep to the time you are an adult reading junk, hoping no one catches you at it, reading is private; that's the most seductive thing about it. It's you and the book. — Phyllis Rose

All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote — Sarah Arthur

...your heart spoke for you. You gave up everything for me. — Camilla Isley

The song "No Fairy Tale" tells my story. Going through the hard things leads to a richer life than just trying to make everything perfect, or worse, pretending things are good when they don't feel right. I've done that more than enough times. — Lisa Loeb

They sat close to each other, and he told her a story about her eyes. They were beautiful dark lakes in which her thoughts swam about like mermaids. And her forehead was a snowy mountain, grand and shining. These were lovely stories. — Hans Christian Andersen

Did you think that if you created a fairy tale and made all of us play along, made me defeat a monster and become a hero ... you'd have a happy ending, like a princess in a hayloft story? — April Genevieve Tucholke

The love of your life is out there ... but they won't just drop on your lap, nor you on theirs ... so stop living an on-hold life! Go out there and experience your life, write your story, and live your fairy tale ... It is on that journey that you'll cross paths with the love that's worthy of the story ... — Steve Maraboli

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

Actually everybody has a story, a fairy tale in their heart that they adhere to. — Phoebe Stone

I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we just might wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that's even better than a miracle. I'd rather earn the money than win the lottery because there's no joy in a reward unless it comes at the end of a story. — Donald Miller

My own life is a fairy tale story - one that has already been written by the hands of God. — Tessa Emily Hall

I have come to realize that the rhythm of the film is one of narrative. I am telling the story. It is as if I were hidden behind the screen, saying: "Then such and such a thing happened." The characters don't seem to be living a life of their own, but a life that is being narrated. Perhaps that's how it should be in a fairy tale. — Jean Cocteau

This is what happens, when things are not quite a fairy tale.
You go into the woods to find your story. If you are brave, if you are fortunate, you walk out of them to find your life. — Kat Howard

That's the tragedy of fairy tales. The whole world puts them on a pedestal. People want their lives to be magical, but what people don't understand is that happiness is sacrificed. There is so much more to the story than what is written. The Cinderella you think she's so unfortunate with her mean sisters and stepmom. You think she deserves a happy ending with a prince, but the twenty-page journey is all you see. You learn little about who she is. What if Cinderella's just a good actress who has everyone fooled, when really, she sucks. She more than sucks. — Angela Parkhurst

Red Riding Hood is not a fairy tale, but rather a universal story about courage and growing up — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Theories about world literature, of which fairy tale is a fundamental part, emphasize the porousness of borders, geographical and inguistic: no frontiercan keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning. — Marina Warner

Matchsticks A Not Quite the Fairy Tale Short Story May Sage — Aimee Easterling

The fairy tale, which to this day is the first tutor of children because it was once the first tutor of mankind, secretly lives on in the story. The first true storyteller is, and will continue to be, the teller of fairy tales. Whenever good counsel was at a premium, the fairy tale had it, and where the need was greatest, its aid was nearest. This need was created by myth. The fairy tale tells us of the earliest arrangements that mankind made to shake off the nightmare which myth had placed upon its chest. — Walter Benjamin

So this fairy tale is a horror story — Michael Buckley

First, I spit out a mouthful of dirt. Then, I screamed at the sky. "That's it! I've had it! Everything is trying to kill me! All I did was make one stupid wish. Aladdin made three. I'm the hero of this story, so where's my happy ending, already? It's not fair."

Rexi bent over, trying to catch her breath. "You know what's not fair? Spending Muse Day as a toad just because the kitchen ran out of frog legs. Or being volunteered for this little journey. So build a bridge, then make like a billy goat and get over it already because no one is listening. — Betsy Schow

Story of O is a fairy tale for another world, a world where some part of me lived for a long time, a world that no longer exists except between the covers of a book. — Anne Desclos

There are no endings for any of us, happy or
otherwise, until we die. A fairy tale only ends
happily because that's the point where the
storyteller stops telling the story. — Lilly Gayle

If this were a fairy tale, this would be the part where the fishboy appears and Diana shoots him through the heart. Because he is a tragic hero, he's our fucking Gatsby, and he lived for his fish and he has to die for his fish. He would never let my fake authority, condoning his abandonment, making up rules about what's okay just to save his life, convince him to give up his family. He would never leave.
He would know that without him, none of us will be as good. Me, without a friend; and the fish, without a brother; and the island, without a story; and Diana, without her something real, we will all be a little bit less than we were before we knew him.
So he wouldn't leave. Not until I could come with him. And I have never been less able to leave than I am now.
But this isn't a fairy tale, and he doesn't appear. We stand here for a long time.
He really left.
Because it was all that we could do. — Hannah Moskowitz

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle's light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slapped some potter's clay over the gouged plaster; when the clay hardened he removed it, baked it, and "showed it abroad" (63). — Annie Dillard

Children are more able to objectively synthesize a story involving vampires, monsters, or dragons due to the distance afforded by the fantastical elements than they are a story revolving around horrors committed by human beings. — Joseph Abbruscato

The story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney. — Ann Patchett

Who is that trip-trapping upon my bridge?'
Miss Davies spoke in the low, growling tones of the troll in the story. Some of the little ones covered their mouths and giggled, but most only watched her solemnly, accepting the
voice of the troll as they accepted the voices of their dreams, and their grave eyes reflected the eternal fascination of the fairy tale: would the monster be bested ... or would it feed? — Stephen King

A common question asked of Mr. Fenn was, "How old is the boy?" to which Mr. Fenn's reply, year after year, was, "He has been somewhere between twelve and thirteen since the day I laid eyes on him. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

...One cannot help but consider the future- what will it be like when all the wild places of the earth have been taken over by civilization, and there is no more room for Indians, Pirates, and Wild Boys? — Christopher Daniel Mechling

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case. — Christopher Hitchens

Instead of celebrating with a cake (too full of poisonous refined sugars) and presents (too materialistic), my mother would come into my room at exactly 3:57 A.M. to tell me the story of my miraculous emergence into this world, as if it was some fairy tale. Although I supposed few fairy tales involved the words 'vaginal flowering'. — Molly Harper

And then they lived happily, and we who hear the story are happier still. — Andrew Lang

It is possible that our race may be an accident, in a meaningless universe, living its brief life uncared-for, on this dark, cooling star: but even so
and all the more
what marvelous creatures we are! What fairy story, what tale from the Arabian Nights of the jinns, is a hundredth part as wonderful as this true fairy story of simians! It is so much more heartening, too, than the tales we invent. A universe capable of giving birth to many such accidents is
blind or not
a good world to live in, a promising universe. — Clarence Day Jr.

Even when a prohibition in a fairy-story is guessed to be derived from some taboo once practised long ago, it has probably been preserved in the later stages of the tale's history because of the great mythical significance of prohibition. A sense of significance may indeed have lain behind some of the taboos themselves. Thou shalt not - or else thou shalt depart beggared into endless regret. The gentlest 'nursery-tales' know it. Even Peter Rabbit was forbidden a garden, lost his blue coat, and took sick. The Locked Door stands as an eternal Temptation. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The ideal story should begin innocently like a fairy-tale, be frightening like a nightmare in the middle, and conclude sadly like a love story ending in separation. — Orhan Pamuk

We knew each other to our fingertips. No, that's not right. We only knew each other in our fingertips, and that was nothing at all, and for a while that was okay. We could have been a love story, a fairy tale, an indie film about high school and selective insanity featuring a boy of angel parts and a girl made of dreaming. We could have been all the best things: bracelets sliding down arms while shots slid down throats, laughter and crashing music in dark and flashing rooms, kisses that started hesitant but didn't stay that way. — Amy Zhang

'Extraordinary' is an original fairy tale, a contemporary story. But like a traditional fairy tale, it heads quickly into frightening, bloody territory. I am afraid for my book, as it goes out alone into the world, just as I was frightened for Phoebe as I wrote and rewrote her story. — Nancy Werlin

Angels do not whisper in our ears. Predestination is a fairy tale, a bedtime story for adults scared of meaningless death. — Paul Doiron

Look, I can appreciate this. I was young too, I felt just like you. Hated authority, hated all my bosses, thought they were full of shit. Look, it's like they say, if you're not a rebel by the age of 20, you got no heart, but if you haven't turned establishment by 30, you've got no brains. Because there are no story-book romances, no fairy-tale endings. So before you run out and change the world, ask yourself, What do you really want? — George Huang

Is there an intelligent man or woman now in the world who believes in the Garden of Eden story? If you find any man who believes it, strike his forehead and you will hear an echo. Something is for rent. — Robert G. Ingersoll

N equally basic passion of mine ab initio was for myth (not allegory!) and for fairy-story, and above all for heroic legend on the brink of fairy-tale and history, of which there is far too little in the world (accessible to me) for my appetite ... — J.R.R. Tolkien

[Life] wasn't a fairy tale, and it didn't have a happy ending--but then again, no story did. In the end everybody dies... But you can be happy right up until the last page... — Aury Wallington