Quotes & Sayings About Folklore

Sophie Hodorowicz Knab, Polish Customs, Traditions, and Folklore (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1996), p. 259. people — Diane Ackerman

It was Sci-Fi and fantasy that got me reading, and Sci-Fi writers in particular have pack rat minds. They introduce all sorts of interesting themes and ideas into their books, and so for me it was a short leap to go from the fantasy and Sci-Fi genres to folklore, mythology, ancient history and philosophy. I did not read philosophy because I set out to become a philosopher; I read it because it looked interesting. — Terry Pratchett

I published my first book in 1982 - a collection of Irish folklore called Irish Folk & Fairy Tales. It is still in print today. My first young adult book was published a couple of years later, and I've been writing in both genres ever since. — Michael Scott

in 1935 the Irish government created the Irish Folklore Commission. In the following decades, Irish-speaking collectors scoured the countryside to record stories of saints, heroes, and spirits. Currently, more than a million and a half pages of folklore reside in the commission's collection which, since 1971, has been continued on by the Folklore Department at University College Dublin. One — Ryan Hackney

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 of the sun, the twinkling of the stars. Our human brain searched for an answer, and the conclusion was that it all must be caused by something greater than ourselves - this, of course, sprouted the earliest seeds of religion. This theory is certainly reflected in faery lore. In the beautiful sloping hills of Connemara in Ireland, for example, faeries were believed to have been just as beautiful, peaceful, and pleasant as the world around them. But in the Scottish Highlands, with their dark, brooding mountains and eerie highland lakes, villagers warned of deadly water-kelpies and spirit characters that packed a bit more punch. — Signe Pike

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 the blood-stains in a well later known as Ffynnon Gollen. In Ireland, the tales of saints slaying giant serpents may have the same meaning; alternatively they (or some of them) may refer to early sightings of genuine water monsters. St Barry banished a serpent from a mountain into Lough Lagan (Roscommon), and a holy well sprang up where the saint's knee touched the ground. — Colin Bord

To us, basing stories on christianity is the same as basing stories on Roman mythology, Native American folklore, or unsubstantiated government conspiracies. — Richard King

I've spent my life wondering when I would earn the right to be a man again. Despite the undeserved good fortune of finding my true love, I always held a kernel of bitterness in my heart that things were not different... I will never be the man that I was. That man is dead - slain - for better or for worse, by my life as the Beast. In your words, the world does not need who I was. — Jack Heckel

When I was younger, I was in love with everything about the British Isles, from British folklore to Celtic music. That was always where my passions were as a young girl, and so I studied folklore as a college student in England and Ireland. — Terri Windling

Common sense is the folklore of philosophy. — Antonio Gramsci

I developed some unique software to public it on the web that I call the Folklore Project. — Andy Hertzfeld

When I once asked why such demons are not seen in America, my informants giggled confusedly and said "They're scared to pass the ocean, it's too far," pointing out that Christ and the apostles never came to America. - Richard Dorson, "A Theory for American Folklore," American Folklore and the Historian (University of Chicago Press, 1971) — Neil Gaiman

Some of my best friends are books. — A. Louise Robertson

I'm proud of it. Apart from marking the first occasion when I used my talent on behalf of other people without being asked and without caring whether I was rewarded
which was a major breakthrough in itself
the job was a pure masterpiece. Working on it, I realized in my guts how an artist or an author can get high on the creative act. The poker who wrote Precipice's original tapeworm was pretty good, but you could theoretically have killed it without shutting down the net
that is, at the cost of losing thirty or forty billion bits of data. Which I gather they were just about prepared to do when I showed up. But mine ... Ho, no! That, I cross my heart, cannot be killed without DISMANTLING the net. — John Brunner

The mirror sighed and spoke in a tone tinged with melancholy. Its language was old and not of any of the worlds known or unknown.

What you dream, what you darkly desire,

Find it by trial or by fire.

Seek it high and seek it low,

Search the skies or the realms below.

Look everywhere but beware,

The deepest magic, the strongest spell

Will not change what the stars foretell. — Sukanya Venkatraghavan

Folklore is a collection of ridiculous notions held by other people, but not by you and me. — Margaret Halsey

Vila the White,
Built a City up height,
Not in the Heavens, not on the ground,
But on the edge of a Cloud,
Vila the White,
Put defenses the bright:
Gold defends the heights, Sun defends the gate,
Moon defends the City when it's late,
Vila the White,
Stood with Sun at sight,
Watching what comes from the bay,
And saw Lightning and Thunder play,
Vila the White,
Wed her son on Moon at night,
And gave her daughter to Gold, as bride,
They have couple brothers, she's their brother's wife. — Stanislaw Sielicki

I'd love to see more novels and short stories where the characters have their own folklore that isn't the Plot-Bearing Prophecy of Doom. — Marie Brennan

The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian. — Eric Metaxas

Coming from the South and growing up in L.A. where it was so segregated - worse than the South in many ways - all the people in my neighborhood were from the South. So you had that Southern cultured environment. The church was very important. And there were these folk ways that were there. I was always fascinated by these Southern stories, people would share these mystified experiences of the South. I wanted to talk about folklore. — Charles Burnett

The crowding of children into insufficient, often squalid spaces seems an inexplicable anomaly in the United States. Images of spaciousness and majesty, of endless plains and soaring mountains, fill our folklore and our music and the anthems that our children sing. "This land is your land," they are told; and, in one of the patriotic songs that children truly love because it summons up so well the goodness and the optimism of the nation at its best, they sing of "good" and "brotherhood" "from sea to shining sea." It is a betrayal of the best things that we value when poor children are obliged to sing these songs in storerooms and coat closets. — Jonathan Kozol

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. For any man may be a king in that life in which he is placed if so he may draw forth the sword of success from out of the iron of circumstance. Wherefore when your time of assay cometh, I do hope it may be with you as it was with Arthur that day, and that ye too may achieve success with entire satisfaction unto yourself and to your great glory and perfect happiness. — Howard Pyle

The themes of metamorphosis (transformation-particularly
human transformation-and identity (particularly human identity) are drawn from the treasury of pre-class world folklore. The folkloric image of man is intimately bound up with transformation and identity. This combination may be seen with particular clarity in the popular folktale )skazkaj. The folktale image of man-throughout the extraordinary variety of folkloric narratives-always orders itself around the motifs of transformation and identity (no matter how varied in its turn the concrete expression of these motifs might be). — Mikhail Bakhtin

Through one hundred years' worth of forgotten books and dusty master's dissertations in the fields of history and folklore, through articles in defunct magazines, and amid brain-numbing — Stephen King

Wrath: look at how their folklore portrays our species. There's Dracula for Christ's sake, an evil bloodsucker who preys on the defenseless. There's piss-poor B movies and porn. And don't get me started on the whole Halloween thing. Plastic fangs. Black capes. The only thing the idiots got right are that we drink blood and that we can't go out in daylight. The rest is bullshit, fabricated to alienate us and stimulate fear in the masses. Or just as offensive, the fiction used to create some kind of mystique for bored humans who think the dark side is a fun place to visit. — J.R. Ward

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, and disposed of, the pine-bending giant Sinis, I'd become completely entranced. Within a few months I'd read every book on myths, legends and folklore in our two nearest libraries. — Alan Lee

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've never written a book, except my first, without at some point considering that I might die before it was completed. This is all part of the superstition, the folklore, the mania of the business, the fetishistic fuss ... Dying in the middle of a wo(rd), or three-fifths of the way through a nov(el). My friend the nov(el)ist Brian Moore used to fear this as well, though for an extra reason: "Because some bastard will come along and finish it for you." Here is a novelist's would-you-rather. Would you rather die in the middle of a book, and have some bastard finish it for you, or leave behind a work in progress that not a single bastard in the whole world was remotely interested in finishing? — Julian Barnes

There was a problem: No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth
hoped for and celebrated in all the newspapers, invoked by zealous bureaucrats in every self-serving television interview. On this matter, the filmmaker was agnostic
he came from money, and couldn't see the urgency. Like many of his ilk, he sometimes confused poverty (which must be eradicated!) with folklore (which must be preserved!), but it was a genuine confusion, without a hint of ill intention, which only made it more infuriating. — Daniel Alarcon

In the folklore of science, there is the often-told story of the moment of discovery: the quickening of the pulse, the spectral luminosity of ordinary facts, the overheated, standstill second when observations crystallize and fall together into patterns, like pieces of a kaleidoscope. The apple drops from the tree. The man jumps up from a bathtub; the slippery equation balances itself.
But there is another moment of discovery - its antithesis - that is rarely recorded: the discovery of failure. It is a moment that a scientist often encounters alone. A patient's CT scan shows a relapsed lymphoma. A cell once killed by a drug begins to grow back. A child returns to the NCI with a headache. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Thanks to you, the leaders of the University branch - Masters Greenleaf and Smith - are safely out of harm's way. As to the Northern branch - well, my agent currently describes it as an association of young men, young and unmarried, who gather in the woods from time to time to celebrate elaborate rituals that draw equally from local folklore and a youthful taste for mysticism and indiscriminate copulation. We're watching them closely. — Ellen Kushner

The United States of America is logically the least magical place in the world. Planned by committee, not even a country, just a legal umbrella for fifty associated provinces, an elaborate polling system for creating other larger and more permanent committees. No mysteries; no demons; one God at the most. Sure, it had its own folklore and tall tales, but it wasn't the same. Its rulers weren't descended from men and women who spoke with birds and rode dragons. Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan were hayseeds, folksy also-rans compared to the madness in the ancient royal blood going back to the Druids, to Byzantium, to Mithraic cults. — Austin Grossman

He spoke!" Ivan said, eyes wide. "The dog talked! Oh my god."
"An ancient witch you can believe in, but not a talking dragon that looks like a dog?" Chudo-Yudo said, sounding slightly piqued. "Hmph. Young people today have such limited imaginations. — Deborah Blake

I've had a lifelong obsession with urban legends and American folklore. — Eric Kripke

When fairy tales are written in the west, they're known as folklore. In the east, fairy tales are called religions. — Paul Henderson

A rich man's soup - and all from a few stones. It seemed like magic! — Marcia Brown

A folklore study differs from most writing, in that the tale is told in the voice of the individual telling the story, not by the collector. — Karen Jones Gowen

Will looked at Evie funny. "Advertising?"
"Yes. You've heard of it, haven't you? Swell modern invention. It lets people know about something they need. Soap, lipstick, radios - or your museum, for instance. We could start with a catchy slogan, like, 'The Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult - we've got the spirit! — Libba Bray

One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from. — Terri Windling

I detest my past, and anyone else's. I detest resignation, patience, professional heroism and obligatory beautiful feelings. I also detest the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, voices making announcements, aerodynamism, boy scouts, the smell of moth balls, events of the moment, and drunken people. — Rene Magritte

Read the folklore masters. Go to galleries. Walk in the woods. That's what you need to be an artist or storyteller. — Terri Windling

Trolls have existed on this planet for as long as humans. This is what I was told and what I translated to Tub. The first mention of them in recorded history is from ninth-century Norway, when the nefarious creatures began showing up in song, verse, and bedtime stories to keep misbehaving children in line. According to Norse folklore, trolls are one of the Dark Beings, the purest embodiments of evil, and they scurried from between the toes of Ymir, the mythic six-headed Frost Giant whose murdered body became the universe in which we live; his bones became the mountains, his teeth boulders, and so forth. — Guillermo Del Toro

Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West
the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it. — John Wayne

You're the Baba Yaga?" He gazed at her in disbelief. "But the Baba Yaga is an ugly old crone, and you're, you're... not! — Deborah Blake

If you read folklore and mythology, any kind of myths, any kind of tall tales, running is always associated with freedom and vitality and youthfulness and eternal vigor. It's only in our lifetime that running has become associated with fear and pain. — Christopher McDougall

Why can't I love him (a 2 yr old nephew) from afar? That's how I want to love him - through pictures and folklore. — Ray Romano

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

The Tree of Folklore has no objection whatever to creative carpenters. — Terry Pratchett

Then on the day when Artemis cries,
then the ashes come falling down. — J.U. Scribe

Boiled food is life,' Levi-Strauss writes, 'roast food death.' He reports finding countless examples in the world's folklore of 'cauldrons of immortality,' but not a single example of a 'spit of immortality. — Michael Pollan

Hmm," she said. "'Curiouser and curiouser,' to quote Alice. — Deborah Blake

One should be wary of talking on end about such subjects as learning, morality or folklore in front of elders or people of rank. It is disagreeable to listen to. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Sleep my baby, rock-a-bye,
On the edge you must not lie.
Wolf the Fluffy roams astray,
Will he grab you, drag away?
Into Furthest Darkest Woods,
Hide you under Willow roots?
There birdies chirp and squeak,
Will they let you fall asleep? — Stanislaw Sielicki

Oh, Marya Morevna! Do you know how the church-folk call me, me and my daughter Gamayun, when they paint us on their ceilings? They call us archangels, and say that we live in heaven, where no vine of sorrow or memory grows. That is where I sent you, not to heaven - tscha! I know nothing of that place. But to a place like the ceiling of a church. — Catherynne M Valente

All it takes, is one leap of faith. — EK Dobbins

The southern Chinese are a mixture of the Han, or northern Chinese, and the local tribes, some of which allowed women a great deal of freedom - much to the horror of the Chinese who were good Confucians. As a result, the folklore from southern China has strong females; and I found that the folktales mirrored my own experience. — Laurence Yep

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 their quaint lozenge panes set in lead, remained very nearly as they had been three centuries back. Over and above the quaint melancholy of our dwelling, with the deep woods of its park and the sullen waters of the mere, our neighborhood was thinly peopled and primitive, and the people round us were ignorant, and tenacious of ancient ideas and traditions. Thus it was a superstitious atmosphere that we children were reared in, and we heard, from our infancy, countless tales of horror, some mere fables doubtless, others legends of dark deeds of the olden time, exaggerated by credulity and the love of the marvelous. ("Horror: A True Tale") — John Berwick Harwood

Romney Marsh remains one of the last great wildernesses of south-east England. Flat as a desert, and at times just as daunting, it is an odd, occasionally eerie wetland straddling the coastal borders of Kent and Sussex, rich in birds, local folklore and solitary medieval churches. — David Hewson

I despise my own past and that of others. I despise resignation, patience, professional heroism and all the obligatory sentiments. I also despise the decorative arts, folklore, advertising, radio announcers' voices, aerodynamics, the Boy Scouts, the smell of naphtha, the news, and drunks.
I like subversive humor, freckles, women's knees and long hair, the laughter of playing children, and a girl running down the street.
I hope for vibrant love, the impossible, the chimerical.
I dread knowing precisely my own limitations. — Rene Magritte

Cabinet is a conscious, explicit attempt to portray the Doctor himself as myth. "He's a mischief, a leprechaun, a boojum," says one character, bookseller and collector of incunabula, Syme. "The Doctor is a myth. He's straight out of Old English folklore, typical trickster figure really."29 Neither part of an ongoing narrative, nor specifically located within the series' past, Cabinet is in a position to challenge the portrayal of the Doctor. — Anthony Burdge, Jessica Burke, Kristine Larsen

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 some of the decadence ... Vampires are a high-class monster: They want to dress up. They want to drink a lot of absinthe, or force their victims to drink a lot of absinthe. They have big parties and have elegant rituals. I think that's a thing we associate with vampires
they are the royalty of our monsters. We expect them to be rich, we expect them to be well-dressed. I wanted to have some of that be true because I like it, and have some of it not be true because it's kind of weird.
I wanted to put in the idea of infection, which I was really interested in and which was a big feature of the vampire books I read growing up. And, the fear and desire for infection
the way in which our urge towards loving vampires is nihilistic. Our fear of them is our survival instincts kicking in. — Holly Black

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 could I put this? I can't find his penis.
Claire paused for half a second. How drunk are you? — Denise Grover Swank

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. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! — Terri Windling

Cosmic terror appears as an ingredient of the earliest folklore of all races and is crystallised in the most archaic ballads, chronicles, and sacred writings. — H.P. Lovecraft

I have never wanted to check out the family folklore that we could be traced back to a dominie at the hamlet of Balquhidder in the Scottish highlands. — James Black

Behind every legendary monster, there is an unknown tragedy. — Julie Deshtor

I think airports are places of huge human drama. The more I see of it, the more I am convinced that Heathrow is a secret city, with its own history, folklore and mythology. But what has surprised me is the love the people who work there feel for the place. Everyone seems to think they are plugged into something majestic. — Tony Parsons

Henceforward there is no longer anything absolutely foreign. Everything is within reach. Accordingly, there is no longer anything exclusively 'own' either. Authenticity has become folklore, it is ownness simulated for others - to whom the indigene himself belongs. — Wolfgang Welsch

[W]hen the modern mythmaker, the writer of literary fairy tales, dares to touch the old magic and try to make it work in new ways, it must be done with the surest of touches. It is, perhaps, a kind of artistic thievery, this stealing of old characters, settings, the accoutrements of magic. But then, in a sense, there is an element of theft in all art; even the most imaginative artist borrows and reconstructs the archetypes when delving into the human heart. That is not to say that using a familiar character from folklore in the hopes of shoring up a weak narrative will work. That makes little sense. Unless the image, character, or situation borrowed speaks to the author's condition, as cryptically and oracularly as a dream, folklore is best left untapped. — Jane Yolen

When we came back to the sun deck, the party talk had swung around to the bones found at the end of the street. Carey was saying the police had been to ask her if there was anything she remembered that might help to identify the bones as her husband's. "I told them," she was saying, "that that rascal had run off and left me, not been killed. For weeks after he didn't come back, I thought he might walk back through that door with those diapers. You know," she told Aubrey parenthetically, "he left to get diapers for the baby and never came back." Aubrey nodded, perhaps to indicate understanding or perhaps because he'd already heard this bit of Lawrenceton folklore. — Charlaine Harris

Lady Gregory, in a note to her play Aristotle's Bellows, writes:
Aristotle's name is a part of our folklore. The wife of one of our labourers told me one day as a bee buzzed through the open door, Aristotle of the Books was very wise, but the bees got the best of him in the end. He wanted to know how they did pack the comb, and he wasted the best part of a fortnight watching them doing it. Then he made a hive with a glass cover on it and put it over them, and thought he would watch them, but when he put his eye to the glass, they had covered it with wax, so that it was as black as the pot, and he was as blind as before. He said he was never rightly killed until then. The bees beat him that time surely. — Hilda M. Ransome

The assumption that men were created equal, with an equal ability to make an effort and win an earthly reward, although denied every day by experience, is maintained every day by our folklore and our daydreams. — Margaret Mead

So, too, if, to our surprise, we should meet one of these morons whose remarks are so conspicuous a part of the folklore of the world of the radio
remarks made without using either the tongue or the brain, spouted much like the spoutings of small whales
we should recognize him as below the level of nature but not as below the level of the imagination. — Wallace Stevens

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 containing the brown-orange mass of dried animal matter arrived from Detroit at the Post Office's "general delivery." At home, by the kerosene light, the recipients unwrapped the packets. A poor relative sometimes would be given some of the fibrous gland, bitter and smelling slightly like strong human sweat, and the rest would go into a Mason jar. Each night, as prescribed by old Burrifous through his oracle, Ronnie, a litt1e would be mixed with clear spring water. And as it gave the water a creamy, rusty look, the owner would sigh with awe and fear. The creature, wolf or man, became more real through the very specific which was to vanquish him. — Leslie H. Whitten Jr.

Myths are what remain once the history of an event has been forgotten or lost to time. Myths are like the memory of one's first crush; the pain and longing one felt at that time is forgotten, but the warmth and sweetness of romance lives on, probably even magnified, larger in the imagination than it was in reality. — Shatrujeet Nath

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 of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney

I'm Liam of Erinthia. I'm here to rescue you ... And You are not Cinderella. You are a tree branch wrapped in a sheet — Christopher Healy

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 sort of enormous rainbow of every possible colour you could imagine. — Diana Wynne Jones

Something tells me this isn't going to end well for everyone involved. Someone may get turned into a frog yet." And that was the good news. — Deborah Blake

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

I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions. — Alan Dundes

Armenian folklore has it that three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart.' What a pity Heaven awarded no apple to the one who wrote the story down. — Nancy Willard

We thought it was drops
of dew and kissed
cold tears from the crossgrass. — Jonas Hallgrimsson

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 Assyrian period — Thomas L. Thompson

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

Once, at the dreaming dawn of history
before the world was categorized and regulated by mortal minds, before solid boundaries formed between the mortal world and any other
fairies roamed freely among men, and the two races knew each other well. Yet the knowing was never straightforward, and the adventures that mortals and fairies had together were fraught with uncertainty, for fairies and humans were alien to each other. — Colin Thubron

Together they'd run away. Together they could find a place to call home. Together they'd finally form their own constellation and never break apart again. He would be her starlight again and she his sun. — Hella Grichi

If there is any one person you can't love, then you don't understand love. The bitter cup we have to drink is the dregs of humility; we must see past the outer shells of insecurity to the seed of divinity deep inside each one of us.
No one virtue is strong enough to stand on its own. No one vice is simple enough not to lead to all others. No one person can appreciate and support us as much as we need. No one event is enough to tear apart our lives.
What does this all mean?
We have to give everything or we will have nothing. We cannot take any short cuts. We have to love everyone, or we cannot truly love anyone. No excuse will mean anything to us in the end.
People are beautiful, don't forget that.
Don't let pomp and circumstance, society or folklore fool you with counterfeit beauty.
True beauty is usually not something you can see, but something you feel; something that inspires you. — Michael Brent Jones

Faeries are associated with wild untamed nature, with art, and with death - so the folklore is rich with different stories to explore. — Holly Black

In the folklore of the British Isles, a bodach is a vile beast that slithers down chimneys at night and carries off children who misbehave. Rather like Inland Revenue agents. — Dean Koontz

It would be dreadfully
ironic, I mused, if once I earned a soul, I forgot everything about being fey, including all my memories of her. That sort of ending seemed
appropriately tragic; the smitten fey creature becomes human but forgets why he wanted to in the first place. Old fairy tales loved that sort of irony. — Julie Kagawa

I have a better internal and intuitive understanding of folklore and myth than science and technology, so in that way fantasy is easier. — Sarah Zettel

Careful, even now, not to thank the wights, she added, You have all been most kind. — Cecilia Dart-Thornton

When Homer composed the Iliad and Odyssey, he was drawing on centuries of history and folklore handed down by oral tradition. When Nicolas Poussin painted The Rape of the Sabine Women, he was re-creating Roman history. When Marcel Proust dipped his petites madeleines into his tea, the taste and aroma set off a flood of memories and emotions from which modern literature has still not recovered. — Twyla Tharp

There's a ton of stuff in mythology and folklore that is loaded with wonderful creatures that I haven't drawn yet, but that's kind of my retirement plan. Theoretically, I won't be doing comics any longer, and I'll just be drawing and painting whatever the hell I want. Most of that will be monsters. — Mike Mignola

Folklore is artistic communication in small groups. — Dan Ben-Amos

Guys who get their name splashed all over history and folklore don't tend to be Boy Scout troop leaders. — Jim Butcher

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest. — Terri Windling

I'm really interested in mythology and folklore. I'm interested in moralities, why we're here, faith ... all of these bigger questions that I think we can place in films that allow us to question and give us a safe place to feel. Those types of questions can pop up in all sorts of different types of films - drama, comedy, action movie. — Brie Larson

Did Owen say your grandmother was a banshee?"
"He said she was 'wailing like a banshee,'" I explained.
Dan got out the dictionary , then; he was clucking his tongue and shaking his head, and laughing at himself saying, "That boy! What a boy! Brilliant but preposterous!" And that was the first time I learned, literally, what a banshee was
a banshee, in Irish folklore, is a female spirit whose wailing is a sign that a loved one will soon die. — John Irving