Quotes & Sayings About Fairytales

I always thought it hadn't influenced me very much, but I heard from many people from England that many motives from German fairytales are to be found in my books. — Cornelia Funke

It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes and princesses, but that they will believe in witches and bogeys. — Susanne Katherina Langer

The ogres and witches and giants of fairytales stand in as metaphors for those obstacles that we all face in our own lives. — Kate Forsyth

Oh my dear from a distant fantasy land! I love to be in your dreams as a fairy of love with wings of flowers and golden glowing flowing hair. — Debasish Mridha

The side of fairytales I don't like is that they always have happy endings, that there's just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that's what I try to teach my kids. — Angelina Jolie

Life is a faerytale written by God's hand. — Hans Christian Andersen

The stories we are told as children do, undoubtedly, mark us for life. They are often stories of dark and terrible things, and we are usually told them just before the lights are turned out and we are left alone; but we love them. We love them when we first hear them, and even when we are grown, and think we have forgotten them entirely, they never lose their power over us. — Neil Bartlett

But fairytales were, at best, dirty mirrors whose warped and pitted surfaces reflected a highly distorted view of the truth, quite different from reality. — Nenia Campbell

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life. — Isobelle Carmody

My first and last philosophy ... I learnt in the nursery ... The things I believed then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales ... They are not fantasies: compared with them other things are fantastic ... Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense. It is not earth that judges heaven, but heaven that judges earth ... I knew the magic beanstalk before I tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon.
I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts. — G.K. Chesterton

I usually make up stories for my kids.I like to tell them stories and make up any kind of crazy to involve them in characters. The kind of fairytales I don't like are the ones with happy endings, where there's just good and evil and things are perfect. I think when there's a good story for children it has a moral tale, so that's what I try to teach my kids. — Angelina Jolie

The Legend of the Dragon Fairytales cleanse and sanitise what were once true stories. In fairytales, knights are chivalrous, clean-shaven and wear shining armour - when in truth they were swarthy, filthy rapists and thugs. Castles are bright and gay when in truth they were grim fortresses. If dragons were real, then in all likelihood they were not graceful, high-chested, noble creatures; rather they would have been dirty, ugly, reptilian and mean. From: The Power of Myth by Craig Ferguson (Momentum, Sydney, 2013) — Matthew Reilly

Hello dead girl," Isola said, ever the hostess.
"Hello heartbeat girl," said the uninvited guest. "It's like a drum, it's so fucking loud. Turn it down, will you? — Fairytales For Wilde Girls

On just a personal level, since I was little, I've loved fairytales, especially this one, because it is about what goes into making a beast a beast. Do you start as a beast? Do you turn into a beast because of the way that people treat you? I think it's something that is really universal and hit a chord with me when I was little, and so, hopefully we can explore some of that. — Brian Wayne Peterson

Their story isn't a fairytale, but that's okay, because fairytales are predictible, and sometimes boring. — Lindy Zart

Patience is the virtue that forges great men. — Chris Vincent

Fantasy is storytelling with the beguiling power to transform the impossible into the imaginable, and to reveal our own "real" world in a fresh and truth-bearing light. — Leonard S. Marcus

Fairytales have always got to have that scary quality, as long as you make them laugh. — Helena Bonham Carter

His face was a ghost story: graveyard eyes, cheekbones as sharp as urban legends, a sealed-coffin mouth. — Allyse Near

I find that you're drawn to certain stories, and there's something about fairytales that have deep roots. They connect really deeply to you, and those are the stories that I find myself drawn to. I love characters that believe the impossible is possible. — Glen Keane

Cinderella? Snow White? What's that? An illness? — J.K. Rowling

I like to read fairytales. They make my imagination go wild, and I wander in fairyland. — Debasish Mridha

Fairytales are bullshit, I snapped, using the same line as he'd used on me, but I meant it. After an imperfect summer with Zack, with highs and lows and everything in between, I no longer wanted the fairytale. It wasn't real. — Monica Alexander

Like a pendulum my life swung between fairytales and nightmares. — K.S. Ruff

A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy. — Ai Weiwei

To me God's voice and inspiration is stronger, of greater importance and authority than that of any fairy or any other spirit like creature from above or below earth. My Spirit Tales are stories based on truth and inspired by His writings.
Stories about YHWH and His great wonderful acts are definitely not fairytales but Spirit Tales. — Sipporah Joseph

In fairytales, when the mask came off, the handsome prince still loved the girl, no matter what -and that alone would turn her into a princess. — Jodi Picoult

Remember The Princess and the Pea? She could feel a single pea through dozens of mattresses, and that's how everyone knew she was of noble blood, even though she'd arrived looking bedraggled and scruffy.
It's supposed to be an example of the saying "breeding will out", meaning that you can always spot true royalty, even if that someone is dressed in rags. Am I the only one who thinks the moral of this story is all screwed up? You get caught in a storm and knock on a stranger's door in the middle of the night to ask for shelter... then when they ask how you slept, you COMPLAIN that you were uncomfortable?
Honey, that's not being a Princess. That's being a diva bitch. — Rosie Blythe

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 and the green fields far beneath him. He knew that some things are real whether you believe in them or not ...
(The Thirteenth King) — Elizabeth Hopkinson

We are basically storytellers, descendants of the old men who sat around the fire and told us legends, fairytales, exploits, or maybe just how funny Og looked when he fell into the tar pit. — Sol Saks

In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales. — Francis Ford Coppola

and to be the queen she wanted me to be." He kissed the side of her head. "Sweetie, you are better than any queen. You're a freedom fighter for our people, and if your Darling is the king you think him to be, you will live to be an empress." "Then I shall be an empress. You will see." Ture smiled at the sincerity of her tone. How she could still believe in fairytales after everything life had tossed in her face, he had no idea. "Fine then. Just make sure when you're empress, you find a king for me." "I will." Ture — Sherrilyn Kenyon

She tasted of fairytales — Laini Taylor

All those old myths and legends and fairytales didn't just appear out of nowhere for no good reason, you know. They came about because there really is such a thing as magic or that it once flourished in the world. Or at least there is something extraordinary that people commonly refer to, or dismiss, as magic. — H.M. Forester

Hans Christian Andersen said 'Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.' Maybe he was right, maybe not. Either way, just remember: enchanting as they may be, in fairytales the forests are always dark. — Greg F. Gifune

Ishbel read maps like storybooks. She was getting off the island, and no one was going to stop her. That was all just romance, just fairytales, because anyone can leave the island. Since they built the bridge, leaving should be as easy as sticking your keys in the car ignition. But leaving is never easy. — Kirsty Logan

If I could see not one single soul in that wilderness of desolation all around me, then the six of us - mounts and riders, both - could boast amongst us not one soul, either, since all the best religions in the world state categorically that not beasts nor women were equipped with the flimsy, insubstantial things when the good Lord opened the gates of Eden and let Eve and her familiars thumble out. — Angela Carter

Recasting fairy tales has become a publishing sub-genre in itself, and has been done both well and to the point of entropy. More interesting are those works where the structures of fairytales are abandoned but the world of 'fairy' is imported as a delicate spice. — Graham Joyce

I would do anything to make you as happy as you make me. You are an amazing woman, and deserve to be treated like a princess. Let me be your Prince Charming, and I will make all of your fairytales come true. — S.H. Timmins

Because, no matter how old we get, we always need to believe in fairytales. — Kristen Ashley

Fairytale: presents impossible events under possible or almost impossible conditions as though they were possible. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The only thing fairytales have taught us is the slipper doesn't always fit, the kiss won't always wake you, and the prince won't always fight for you. However, one thing that rings true, the apple will ALWAYS be poisoned. — Samuel Crone

They've been lying from the start. From the first time we read the words 'once upon a time,' we're fed the idea that these girls - these gorgeous, demure, singing-with-the-wildlife girls - get a happy ending. And I get it. Poor thing had to do some chores around the house, fine. But the idea that she needs a magic old lady to come down and skim off the dirt so the prince will see her beauty? That's ridiculous. Maybe she should have been working on her lockpicking skills instead of serenading squirrels. She could have busted out, hitched a ride to the castle, and impressed the prince with her safe-cracking prowess. Sorry, magic-fairy lady. She didn't need your help. — Kelsey Macke

... for nightinggales - we know - can't live on fairytales. — Leo Tolstoy

The euphoric lust cloud is gone and once the smoke begins to clear, like in all good fairytales, the princess turns into nothing more than a common farm girl while the prince goes back to being a regular frog. — Tali Alexander

How can any of us even know what to believe anymore? Our culture's full of so much phoniness and deception. Companies advertise products to make us believe that we will be more beautiful, more healthy, or live longer by consuming their products. We are seduced by lovers who feed their porn addictions when we're asleep. We're taught to believe that if we work hard and take risks, that we can achieve our dreams, yet youth unemployment is the highest it's been in decades. Fairytales tell us that true love exists, but half of all marriages end in divorce. — Shannon Mullen

I will not wear a tulle-tailed dunce cap for anyone or for any reason. — Chautona Havig

Maybe there weren't fairytales, or dreams didn't often really come true, but this moment felt very close. As close as it gets to perfect in an imperfect world. — Lee Woodruff

In books there are chapters to separate out the moments, to show that time is going by and things are changing, and sometimes the parts even have titles that are full of promise - 'The Meeting', 'Hope', 'Downfall' - like paintings do. But in life there's nothing like that, no titles or signs or warnings, nothing to say 'Beware, danger!' or 'Frequent landslides' or 'Disillusion ahead'. In life you stand all alone in your costume, and too bad if it's in tatters. — Delphine De Vigan

I am enmeshed in my lies, and I want absolution. I cannot tell the truth because I have felt the heads of men in my womb. The truth would be death-dealing and I prefer fairytales. I am wrapped in lies which do not penetrate my soul. As if the lies I tell were like costumes. The shell of mystery can break and grow again over night. But the moment I step into the cavern of my lies I drop into the darkness. I see a face which stares at me like a cross-eyed man. — Anais Nin

Americans live not by facts, but by a lengthy list of myths. — Dave Champion

I didn't break into comics to write fairytales or crime comics. — Mark Millar

Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. "It's finished," we tell one another, "it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End. — Salman Rushdie

Look at him, lying there. Why should he need me to give him strength
to watch over him, and always be worrying how he's feeling? Surely he'll find it himself. Isn't that what we believe, that we do always somehow find the strength? That the path will lead out of the forest; that the riddle will be solved; that the child never dies. — Neil Bartlett

If you're going to do something, DO IT.
If you want something, GET IT.
Don't just wish for it!
--- Mary Lynn H. Plaisance — Mary Lynn Plaisance

I was alone as a child. I lived in fairytales, adventures, Shakespeare. They are the friends, my books. — Alejandro Jodorowsky

Maybe princes aren't real," Sada said. Her eyes were crafty and sad at the same time. "But monsters are." She opened her mouth wide and showed Azhar the wildflowers sitting on her tongue. — Mercedes M. Yardley

Fairytales do exist if you're brave enough and have just the right dash of badass in you to chase them down and fight like a warrior to live them out." -Blue — H.J. Bellus

Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales. — Carine Roitfeld

Fairytales are stories that span every generation and they've been around for a long time. — Jamie Dornan

For a momente she [Gretel] stopped and considered following the rain's advice. But then she shook her head. "You're being foolish," Gretel told herself. "Rain can't talk."
No, of course it can't. The moon can eat children, and fingers can open doors, and people's heads can be put back on.
But rain? Talk? Don't be ridiculous.
Good thinking, Gretel dear. Good thinking. — Adam Gidwitz

A memory: Isola as a toddler, sugarlump teeth, skin still smelling of milk. Hair that curled without use of an iron and sweet dresses that didn't matter were dirtied. When she was old enough, she demanded the usual suspects at bedtime: The Little Mermaid, Hansel and Gretel, Beauty and the Beast.
Even then, Mother's contempt for non-Pardieu fairytales was obvious.
'Hmph,' she snorted derisively, folding up her knees to perch on Isola's bed. 'Listen to me, Isola. The original Beauty's just an encouragement to young women to accept arranged marriages. What it's really saying to impressionable girls is, "Don't worry if your new husband is decades older than you, or ugly, or horrid. If you're sweet and obedient enough, you might just discover he's a prince in disguise!'

Mother's Most Lasting Advice
'Never be that girl, Isola. Never pick the beast or the wolf on the off-chance he won't devour you. — Allyse Near

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
'Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy — Christina Rossetti

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

But this is a story,
and in a story
there is always someone
beautiful enough.
- 'The Girl with Two Skins' from A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects — Catherynne M Valente

Not all fairytales have happy endings, my dear ... Not all witches burn in ovens, not every princess wakes up, and sometimes the trail of breadcrumbs doesn't lead to a safe place ... I should know.- Extract from The Blood Witching, copyright Eleanor Keane. — Eleanor Keane

It happened like that in fairytales, you see, oh yes, those heroic men would hack down a forest just to get to you. Where were all the heroes nowadays? She — Caroline Roberts

Leonora is the grownups' version of Cinderella. She doesn't take crap from any ugly stepsisters. She doesn't sit indoors waiting to be rescued by prince charming. Oh, no, she rescues prince charming, Florestan, who's locked up in a dungeon by his archenemy, Pizarro. Cinderella was fun when we were little girls, played with dolls and believed in passive fairytales. Now that we're grown women who play with toys, it's only fit to believe in active fairytales. — Luella Christie

Being in love isn't always the fairytale we want it to be, but guess what? Fairytales aren't real. Love is, or it can be, if you meet its challenges head on. And being less than honest with someone you love is the worst possible thing you can do. — Carol Lynne

As a reader, coming to my reading as a writer immersed in fairytales, I can't help but notice in so many stories, plays, poems that I read, the sort of breadcrumbs of fairytale techniques, so I'm very excited when I notice that. — Kate Bernheimer

Snow-quiet, sleep-silent, only the fun-fire faraway songsinging of children; and the room was blue with cold, colder than the cold of fairytales: lie down my heart among the igloo flowers of snow. — Truman Capote

Time was too much a part of love, for even in fairytales the proof of love was not its first moment, but its latest ones - that people lived happily ever after. Love at first sight was nothing but infatuation until proved by time ... — Margaret Mahy

The God of Imagination lived in fairytales. And the best fairytales made you fall in love. It was while flicking through "Sleeping Beauty" that I met my first love, Ivar. He was a six-year-old bello ragazzo with blond hair and eyebrows. He had bomb-blue eyes and his two front teeth were missing.
The road to Happily Ever After, however, was paved with political barbed wire. Three things stood in my way.
1. The object of my affection didn't know he was the object of my affection.
2. The object of my affection preferred Action Man to Princess Aurora.
3. The object of my affection was a boy and I wasn't allowed to love a boy. — Diriye Osman

In the blink of an eye, the fairytales told to children were as real as death and taxes. Vampires, shifters, trolls, demons and creatures of myth, were as real as the air we breathe. — L.A. Kennedy

In terms I hope you'll understand, darling, in fairytales, the prince vanquishes the wicked queen. The evil stepmother. The malicious goblin. In real life, Daisy, to avenge wrong done to his princess, if the need arises, the prince puts a bullet in somebody's brain. — Kristen Ashley

Fairytales teach us that love is beauty, happiness, and faith. Life teaches us that sometimes we can feel hurt, useless, and lost. Sometimes we lose the ones we love. Sometimes we just can't handle the pain. And sometimes we just have to say goodbye. — Dannielle Wicks

The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons, but children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed. — G.K. Chesterton

I've always loved fairytales, and I've loved the concept of, um, some of the best parts of a lot of stories are the beginning. — Darren Criss

Come sit, dear," the old woman said. "We were just discussing kelpies and changelings."

I turned a delightfully amused face at Ronan, hoping to see him embarrassed to be caught in a world of fantasy, but his face was impassive, completely unperturbed. Those were the hardest boys to ignore: the ones that weren't concerned with your opinion of them, not afraid to be caught listening to fairytales. — Annie Cosby

Truly, there is magic in fairytales.
For it takes but a simply-uttered 'Once upon a time ... ' to allure and spellbind an audience. — Richelle E. Goodrich

To tell the truth, fairytales have never gone out of style. They have been told and retold for thousands of years, finding new shapes and structures with each new generation of tellers. — Kate Forsyth

I was a reader before I was a writer, and when I started putting together my first collection of short stories, Fairytales For Lost Children, I drew on my rich history as a reader to try and create my voice. I wanted this voice to reflect my Somali background, my Kenyan upbringing and my London home. This voice would be a mashup of all the elements that formed my youth; the sticky-sweet Jamaican patois, the Kenyan street slang, my Somali and Italian linguistic tics, my love of jazz poetics and nineties hip-hop slanguistics. This language would form the bed on which my narratives of love, loss, identity and hope would rest. — Diriye Osman

Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears. — Kate Forsyth

I wasn't into fairytales when I was little. I was of the generation of the earlier Disney films where many of the female characters, with the exception of the Maleficent's, were not little girls that I admired ... the little princesses. They weren't characters that I identified with. I think that's very different now for my girls and more recent films. — Angelina Jolie

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. — J. Aleksandr Wootton

I want to cover all areas that can be depicted visually. This ranges from fairytales to attempts to enter the abstract and view oneself as a social outcast or someone struggling to stay alive. — Gunter Brus

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

I realize that for all my penchant in believing that there's more to the world than what we can see, that folk tales and fairy tales are based on real, if forgotten events, I never accepted that part of it as being real. — Charles De Lint

Fairytales are healthy for the children. As they grow up, the magical thinking wears off, but the fairytale-induced creative brain circuits stay forever. — Abhijit Naskar

I don't want to be a Princess," she said finally. "You can't make me be one." She knew very well what became of Princesses, as Princesses often get books written about them. Either terrible things happened to them, such as kidnappings and curses and pricking fingers and getting poisoned and locked up in towers, or else they just waited around till the Prince finished with the story and got around to marrying her. Either way, September wanted nothing to do with Princessing. — Catherynne M Valente

Anyone who still wants to experience fairytales these days can't afford to dither when it comes to using their brains. — Robert Musil

I've loved fairytales, folklore and mythology since I was a small child, and I think it was inevitable that they would influence my style and my development of stories. — Juliet Marillier

But I knew that, both in fairyland and the real world, too, wishes were a slipperier things. — Karen Joy Fowler

Maybe in fairytales you're only as old as you feel, but here in L. A. you're every second as old as your pores. — Lois Greiman

From the very beginning, history wasn't content simply to be nostalgic fairytales; it wanted to make you think. — Simon Schama

I don't know a kid who grew up in the '90s who wasn't obsessed with Disney, and I guess I never grew out of that phase, honestly. It's not just Disney: it's anything that has to do with fairytales for me. I think I just have Peter Pan Syndrome or something. — Todrick Hall

But I felt like I'd made a journey to the land of fairytales only to find out that the magical world was identical to the real one. Even in fairytales, the sun still burns, sand still works its way into your bikini bottoms, and the diner next door to your motel still scorches toast. — Holly Schindler

If you read fairy tales carefully, you'll notice they are mostly about people who aren't heroes. They don't have special powers, or gifts. Often they are despised as stupid, They are bullied, beaten up, robbed, starved. But they find they are stronger than their misfortunes. — Amanda Craig

It's time to put away our fairytales, all of them, and assume our responsibilities, the adult responsibilities that begin with adult knowledge. Our planet needs us. She needs us to think like healers and act like warriors. And if you think that's a contradiction, then get out of the way. — Lierre Keith

And if you were still here today, I would tell you, that in your future, do not settle for anything less than the Jake Andrews of the world. Because they exist, and not just in fairytales. — Jay McLean