Folktale Quotes & Sayings

The Dreamer awakes
The shadow goes by
The tale I have told you,
That tale is a lie.
But listen to me,
Bright maiden, proud youth
The tale is a lie;
What it tells is the truth. — Traditional Folktale Ending

She walks to the boy, tilts her head up at him, and smiles. He bends down to kiss her. Then he helps her onto the horse, and she rides away with him to a faraway place, until they can no longer be seen.
These are only rumors, of course, and make little more than a story to tell around the fire. But it is told. And thus they live on. — Marie Lu

The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the soul. — Joseph Campbell

The tale is told by royalty and vagabonds alike, nobles and peasants, hunters and farmers, the old and the young. The tale comes from every corner of the world, but no matter where it is told, it is always the same story.

...Some say that, once upon a time, she had a prince, a father, a society of friends. Others say that she was once a wicked queen, a worker of illusions, a girl who brought darkness across the lands. Still others say that she once had a sister, and that she loved her dearly. Perhaps all of these are true.

These are only rumors, of course, and make little more than a story to tell around the fire. But it is told. And thus they live on.

- "The Midnight Star," a folktale. — Marie Lu

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

I should have known by then that it's never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass; it's the ones you don't expect at all. — Karen Thompson Walker

The folktale world is oriented positively toward its protagonist; a folktale is defined by the hero's triumph: magic weapons and helpers are, with the necessary narrative retardation, at his beck and call. — Darko Suvin

It will also be a little bit scary, the way it always is when we're brave enough to touch the rawesr, realest truths. When we have the guts to look directly into the mirror and say Mary Worth thirteen times without paues and see - thrillingly, terrifyingly - that it was never her we had to fear.
It war always only us. — Cheryl Strayed

She wasn't precisely sure what she was walking toward but she wouldn't have turned around for the world. — Patrick DeWitt

Linguists traditionally observe that esteemed writers have been using they as a gender-neutral pronoun for almost a thousand years. As far back as the 1400s, in the Sir Amadace story, one finds the likes of Iche mon in thayre degree ("Each man in their degree"). — John McWhorter

I got my first guitar when I was 11. It was an electric, and I can remember just wanting to be Avril Lavigne! But I got annoyed with having to plug it in and play with amps and pedals and stuff. Then I got given a cheap acoustic, a Tanglewood, and I thought it was awesome because I could play it anywhere! — Gabrielle Aplin

The sentient beast has long been a staple of fantasy fiction and its antecedents in myth and folktale. — Paul Di Filippo

Jesse Valdez was sweating profusely and breathing hard. I was sitting on his back, ratcheting the second handcuff to his left wrist after a short struggle. There wasn't much fight left in the young man, and being fifteen years his senior, I was relieved he was out of gas. I rolled him over and helped him to his feet. — J. Warner Wallace

Some day (when we have enough spiritual growth) we will come to see that the seemingly disjointed happenings, the apparent accidents, are really part of an orderly pattern. — Emmet Fox

The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life ... and this is why there are no wicked stepchildren in the tales. — Jill Paton Walsh

I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be leading me on. — Robin McKinley

A folktale without a moral is merely a whimsy. — Stephen Sondheim

I promised you the moon for your throne and stars to wear in your hair," said Amar, gesturing inside. "And I always keep my promises. — Roshani Chokshi

Avoiding other people was his new goal in life. — James Dashner

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow. — Omar Khayyam

An important dimension of Tess of the d'Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and stories of love, betrayal and revenge, involving stock figures. This gives Tess of the d'Urbervilles an anti-realistic inflection. From the world of ballad and folktale Hardy draws such fateful coincidences as the failure of Angel to encounter Tess at the 'Club-walking' on which he intrudes with his brothers, the letter to Angel that she accidentally slips under the carpet, the loss of her shoes when she tries to visit his family, and the family portraits on the wall of their honeymoon dwelling, as well as several omens. This chimes effectively with a world in which the rural folk have a superstitious and fatalistic attitude to life. — Geoffrey Harvey

Not very smart," Chudo-Yudo growled. "Stalking a Baba Yaga." He showed a set of sharp white teeth. "Maybe he has a death wish. I could help with that You want me to eat him? — Deborah Blake

The trouble with being a ghostwriter or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without credit. If one wants the credit, one has to cease being a ghost and become a leader or innovator. — Bob Kane

K.T. stops dead in her tracks, her eyes locked on Horace's car.
"Holy crap," she mutters, eyes wide. "Is that a '69 Camaro SS?"
I glance back at her as I unlock the door. "Yeah. You know cars?"
She shakes her head, her lips trembling. "Just this one."
Her reaction is too strong to be normal. People don't usually get choked up at the sight of a car. There's something about this car specifically that freaks her out.
It takes a second for her to smile, but she forces the expression onto her face. "It's my sister's favorite car. — Erica Cameron

Stories are the things people use to give the universe a shape ... there is little difference between a folktale, a religous revelation, and a scientific theor — Tad Williams

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

As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic. — Jesse L. Martin

I'm sort of the bossiest sister. — Elizabeth Banks

His nose was his most distinctive feature: curved like a scimitar at the top but bent flat at the tip, and with the bone of the bridge cut like a diamond
in short, a nose out of a folktale, the sort of sizable, convoluted, intricately turned nose that, for many centuries, confronted though they have been by every imaginable hardship, the Jews have never stopped making. — Philip Roth

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

Once upon a time ... " "In the beginning was ... " That's the way it always starts off. Every story, gospel, history, chronicle, myth, legend, folktale, or old wives' tale blues riff begins with "Woke up this mornin' ... — Steven Tyler