Good Fairy Quotes & Sayings

I am married to a prince who will one day be a king. Usually this is where the fairy tale ends. Stories don't go much further than this moment, and I fear there's a good reason for it. A sense of dread hung over today, a black cloud I still can't get rid of. It is an unease deep in the heart of me, feeding off my strength. — Victoria Aveyard

I am not a fairy godmother or anything of that sort, but I hope to give you a happy home and a good education, and to send you out into the world true, brave, generous men, prepared to serve God truly all the days of your life."
~Aunt Persis — Constance Savery

But I also know of yet another life. I know and want it and devour it ferociously. It's a life of magical violence. It's mysterious and bewitching. In it snakes entwine while the stars tremble. Drops of water drip in the phosphorescent darkness of the cave. In that dark the flowers intertwine in a humid fairy garden. And I am the sorceress of that silent bacchanal. I feel defeated by my own corruptibility. And I see that I am intrinsically bad. It's only out of pure kindness that I am good. Defeated by myself. Who lead me along the paths of the salamander, the spirit who rules the fire and lives within it. And I give myself as an offering to the dead. I weave spells on the solstice, spectre of an exorcised dragon. — Clarice Lispector

Diabolical forces are formidable. These forces are eternal, and they exist today. The fairy tale is true. The devil exists. God exists. And for us, as people, our very destiny hinges upon which one we elect to follow. — Ed Warren

How many times have you said, 'This is it. I've finally found my one true love'? And how many times has the reality turned out differently? Paperback romances and fairy tales promote an ideal of a first and only love, but few of us can claim to have had such uncomplicated good fortune. For most people, the process of finding the perfect partner is one trial and error: breakups, makeups, missed opportunities and misunderstandings. Human love is a fragile creation, and sometimes the smallest thing - the wrong choice of words or a single clumsy gesture - can make love shatter, stall or fade away. — Haruki Murakami

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

Love never lies and it never tries, it's unafraid and heaven made.

Keep the faith, surrender the time, just like a grape we need to ripen on the vine.

Be like a fairy, constantly glow, leave a trail of love wherever you go.

Do not try to make sense of this world. Do try to know yourself and to grow yourself while in it.

The more you are, the more you have.

Rather than make the best of a situation, make the best situation. Create, don't negate.

Keep the dream alive and the heart open.

Be your most glorious self, and even better, be indifferent to what anyone may think of it.

Don't fear the dark, it's helping you find the light. We wouldn't know morning, if we didn't see night.

Never give to say you've given, never shy away from a good cry, never stop a laugh from happening, and always wonder, why?

Don't get mad, get motivated! — Allyson Giles

Scientists like myself merely use their gifts to show up that which already exists, and we look small compared to the artists who create works of beauty out of themselves. If a good fairy came and offered me back my youth, asking me which gifts I would rather have, those to make visible a thing which exists but which no man has ever seen before, or the genius needed to create, in a style of architecture never imagined before, the great Town Hall in which we are dining tonight, I might be tempted to choose the latter. — Max Perutz

Letters crossing in the post, unfamiliar tunes heard three times in one day, the way that blows of fate descend upon the same bowed shoulders, and the beams of good fortune glow perpetually upon the blessed. Fairy tales, as I said, are lived out daily. There is far more going on in the world than we ever imagine. — Fay Weldon

The world loves a good royal fairy story. — Heather Lyons

We should not expect the state to appear in the guise of an extravagant good fairy at every christening, a loquacious companion at every stage of life's journey, and the unknown mourner at every funeral. — Margaret Thatcher

I've had a fairy tale life. I had a perfect family, a beautiful childhood, an incredible upbringing. I lived a lot of life but a lot of good life. — John Stamos

I dedicate this novel to Gala, who was constantly by my side while I was writing it, who was the good fairy of my equilibrium, who banished the salamanders of my doubts and strengthened the lions of certainties ... — Salvador Dali

I love seeing the Oscar films and epic dramas. But I'd rather watch a romantic comedy than any other kind of movie. There's something about movies like these that make you feel so good and happy and that you want to live in that world
to be that girl and be part of the fairy tale. I have always believed in fairy tales. — Jennifer Lopez

She read absorbedly books found in boarding-house parlours, in hotels, in such public libraries as the times afforded. She was alone for hours a day, daily. Frequently her father, fearful of loneliness for her, brought her an armful of books and she had an orgy, dipping and swooping about among them in a sort of gourmand's ecstasy of indecision. In this way, at fifteen, she knew the writings of Byron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Felicia Hemans. Not to speak of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Bertha M. Clay, and that good fairy of the scullery, the Fireside Companion, in whose pages factory girls and dukes were brought together as inevitably as steak and onions. These last were, of course, the result of Selina's mode of living, and were loaned to her by kind-hearted landladies, chambermaids, and waitresses all the way from California to New York. — Edna Ferber

A girl locked in a tower with no life experience. But, you know, Rebecca ... this isn't a fairy tale. Your tower will never protect you from the darkness outside."
"And your tower will always be a prison," I said softly. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name ... That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still. — Frederick Buechner

We are told in fairy tales that evil always loses and good eventually will triumph. That is what makes those stories so desirable to the general population. They want to believe that karma works and the bad guys are always defeated in the end. But in a world where no one thinks they are the bad guy and everyone plays the victim, it is harder and harder to find the black and the white of a situation. We are all the hero, and we are all the monster. — John Goode

Tell me the story, Pew ... It was a woman. You always say that. There's always a woman somewhere, child; a princess, a witch, a stepmother, a mermaid, a fairy godmother, or one as wicked as she is beautiful, or as beautiful as she is good. Is that the complete list? Then there is the woman you love. Who's she? That's another story. — Jeanette Winterson

All you need to catch a fairy is an old birdhouse and some shiny stuff. You know, like glass and glitter, or pieces of colored plastic or metal things that'll sparkle when the sun hits them.
You can paint the birdhouse, but it doesn't really matter what color. It's not like how hummingbirds like red things, fairies aren't that picky.
So you take your birdhouse and shiny stuff and just hang it somewhere. High but not too high. Trees are good but fairies are everywhere so trees aren't like, a requirement.
You don't even need to put anything over the birdhouse entrance. Once they get in they won't be able to figure out how to get out.
Fairies are kind of stupid. — Erin Morgenstern

For Nature is not unjust. She does not steal into the womb and like an evil fairy give her good gifts secretly to men and deny them to women. Men and women are born free and equal in ability and brain. The injustice begins after birth. — Pearl S. Buck

A woman desires to be a man's last romance, her baby's first love and a person who can live with dignity all her life. As a girl matures to be a woman, her fairy tale imagination gets superseded by her struggle to be a good wife, a good mother and most importantly, a woman of virtue. As victor or vanquished, a woman keeps fighting the sequence of odds and evens throughout her life. Since nature had made women strong, society has very wisely done the reverse to maintain the balance. — Purba Chakraborty

And the good fairy said, I won't leave you money or pretty dresses but I will leave you the spirit to seek your fortune from your own efforts. — Louisa May Alcott

It's an invention, a fairy tale devoid of any sense, like all the legends in which good spirits and fortune tellers fulfill wishes. Stories like that are made up by poor simpletons, who can't even dream of fulfilling their wishes and desires themselves. I'm pleased you're not one of them, Geralt of Rivia. It makes you closer in spirit to me. If I want something, I don't dream of it - I act. And I always get what I want. — Andrzej Sapkowski

The key to happiness - as any good fairy godmother will tell you - is not to avoid problems, but to overcome them. — Janette Rallison

Petulia's expression didn't change for a while. Then she said: 'So it WAS a fairy, then?'
'Well, yes. Technically.'
The round pink face smiled.
'Good, I did wonder, because it was, um, you know ... having a wee up against one of Miss Level's garden gnomes?'
'DEFINITELY a Feegle,' said Tiffany. — Terry Pratchett

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

Tell me, now, fairy as you are, - can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?"
It would be past the power of magic, sir;" and, in thought, I added,"a loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather, your sternness has a power beyond beauty." Mr. Rochester had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the presnt instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions. He seemed to think too good for common purpose: it was the real sunshine of feeling-he shed it over me now. — Charlotte Bronte

I like Cinderella, I really do. She has a good work ethic. I appreciate a good, hard-working gal. And she likes shoes. The fairy tale is all about the shoe at the end, and I'm a big shoe girl. — Amy Adams

I absolutely believed when I was young because the Tooth Fairy was always good to me. The Tooth Fairy generally left me a dollar or two dollars and, as a kid, that was a lot of money. — Dwayne Johnson

Even if I only wrote erotica, I wouldn't care what you have to say. I make people happy! Blake and I provide readers with fun and entertainment and an escape from their lives, which is a damn good thing because life is hard and really sucks sometimes. Life isn't a fairy-tale and not everyone in gets a happily-ever-after, but in our book world they do. — Karina Halle

[The] great fairy Science, who is likely to be queen of all the fairies for many a year to come, can only do you good, and never do you harm ... — Charles Kingsley

Rebecca, we live in a world where darkness seems, in the minds of many, something banished to the world of fairy tales and superhero movies. How surprising it then becomes - even for those of us who believe otherwise - that it may appear in our own lives, in our own battles. To face an opponent that is more than the average 'jerk,' who has made a deadly choice, is, let us admit it, nothing that we expect to experience. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

Faggot, queer, fairy. Those words aren't taught in a history course. You don't learn them with the alphabet. Discrimination comes from the circles you're supposed to trust. The home, the family, the church. They try to convince you God made you in his image, and then would destroy you because you weren't good enough. That's a good God? Who comes up with this crap? — Dan Skinner

When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy. — J.M. Barrie

By the Hospital Lane goes the 'Faeries Path.' Every evening they travel from the hill to the sea, from the sea to the hill. At the sea end of their path stands a cottage. One night Mrs. Arbunathy, who lived there, left her door open, as she was expecting her son. Her husband was asleep by the fire; a tall man came in and sat beside him. After he had been sitting there for a while, the woman said, 'In the name of God, who are you?' He got up and went out, saying, 'Never leave the door open at this hour, or evil may come to you.' She woke her husband and told him. 'One of the good people has been with us,' said he. ("Village Ghosts") — W.B.Yeats

I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables. — A.S. Byatt

If you listen very carefully, you can hear the good fairy come in the night and leave our assignment for tomorrow. — Orson Scott Card

The legacy of the fairy story in my brain is that everything will work out. In fiction it would be very hard for me, as a writer, to give a bad ending to a good character, or give a good ending to a bad character. That's probably not a very postmodern thing to say. — Kate Atkinson

The naturalist worldview is a good way to feel grounded and feel part of something that isn't based on fairy tales. It's based on observable facts in the human and in the biological history of the planet. I think that can be a source for comfort. — Greg Graffin

You
see, I came into this world just like I'm assuming
you did - full of excitement and
promise. I wanted to do so much good work,
help so many people, and give as much as I
could to those who needed me. But then I
learned a very harsh lesson - the world
doesn't always give back. I am not a tragic case of the world; I am
the world - cruel, unfair, and not a fairy tale.
People are not born heroes or villains;
they're created by the people around them.
And one day when your bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed view of life gets its first taste of
reality, when bitterness and anger first run
through your veins, you'll discover that you
are just like me - and it'll scare you to death. — Chris Colfer

In our time we have less severe standards. We tell children about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy for reasons we think emotionally sound, but then disabuse them of these myths before they're grown. Why retract? Because their well-being as adults depends on them knowing the world as it really is. We worry, and for good reason, about adults who still believe in Santa Claus. — Carl Sagan

Kiran says (the shelf) is full of stories. If it is, then I like fairy stories. Fairy stories are fair. In them wishes are granted, words are enchanted, the honest and brave make it safely through to the last page and the baddies either have to give up their wickedness for ever and ever, no going back, or get ruthlessly written out of the story, which they hardly ever survive. Also in fairy stories there are hardly any of those half-good half-bad people that crop up so constantly in real life and are so difficult to believe in ... — Hilary McKay

It was about a girl who helps an ugly old woman who turns out to be a good fairy in disguise. Inner values versus shallow appearances. — Connie Willis

Like the children in fairy stories who have seen their parents make pacts with terrifying strangers, who have discovered that our fears are based on nothing but the truth, but who come back fresh from marvellous escapes and take up their knives and forks, with humility and good manners, prepared to live happily ever after
like them, dazed and powerful with secrets, I never said a word — Alice Munro

I do the same with my books ... Nothing like a good argument in the margins with someone who's already said all they have to say on the subject. — Betsy Cornwell

THE REASON I CAN BE 38 AND HAVE TWO KIDS AND WEAR A BIKINI IS BECAUSE I WORK MY ASS OFF. IT'S NOT AN ACCIDENT. IT'S NOT LUCK, IT'S NOT FAIRY DUST, IT'S NOT GOOD GENES. IT'S KILLING MYSELF FOR AN HOUR AND A HALF FIVE DAYS A WEEK, BUT WHAT I GET OUT OF IT IS RELATIVE TO WHAT I PUT INTO IT. — Gwyneth Paltrow

A child's world is fresh and new and beautiful, full or wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantment of later year ... the alienation from the sources of our strength. — Rachel Carson

Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality
for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely. — Terri Windling

Fairy tales were important to me. Aren't they for any kid? My sister says I spent a good five years of my youth convinced I would grow up to be a princess. — Susannah Grant

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

Good guilt is a product of love and responsibility. It is a natural, positive instinct that parents and good child care providers have. If bad guilt is a monster, good guilt is a friendly fairy godmother, yakking away in your head to keep you alert to the needs of your baby. — Jean Marzollo

Promises are like silly jokes, told around a table when the food is good and no one has anything to lose by telling a lie or two - lies should have been a synonym for the word 'promise' in dictionaries, but only a few people knew it. — Cameron Jace

But most dragons seem to have interesting personalities
besides probably having quite good reasons for what they do, if only one could understand them — Diana Wynne Jones

I've got the perfect dress. It's going to knock your socks off."
Marcus wasn't sure if that was good or bad, but he couldn't wait to find out. — Deborah Blake

Pan took the joke good-naturedly, probably deciding it wasn't a good idea to argue with a fifteen-year-old who had just pulled two people up ten feet. — Grace Anthony

There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason") — W.B.Yeats

Every good fairy tale has a kernel of truth to it. — Melissa Grey

The Flowers
All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames
These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all — Robert Louis Stevenson

Yet Katie held fast to the dream that perhaps there were men in the world who appreciated good women - men capable of loving a woman enough to die for her.
Something had to inspire the heroes in fairy tales and books.
Her Aunt Augusta always said it was only womenfolk's eternal wish for better men that inspired such stories ... but Katie liked to believe that living or, at least, once-living men inspired them. — Marcia Lynn McClure

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies. — Marc Bloch

I wished for my fairy godmother, the good witch of the north, or some other bitch with a wand. — Jocelynn Drake

Well,'said Ernest, 'by some strange coincidence I know this story.'
Boddichek was not good at irony. 'I knew that there was that possibility,' he said, 'but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it before taking a meeting.'
'Reread it?' said Mayday. 'We are talking about Cinderella, and the wicked stepmother and the Ugly Sisters and Buttons the page and the Fairy Godmother, "Cinders, you shall go to the ball but be sure you're home by midnight or you'll turn into pumpkin"?'
'Hey, you know it pretty well,' said young Casey with admiration in his voice. 'But I've found a new directionality for this story.'
'Do you mean direction?' asked Mayday.
'I guess I do.'
'Then', snapped Mayday, 'why don't you fucking say so? — Jonathan Lynn

Once upon a time there was a Queen who had a son so ugly and so misshapen that it was long disputed whether he had human form. A fairy who was at his birth said, however, that he would be very amiable for all that, since he would have uncommon good sense. — Charles Perrault

A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief. — Upton Sinclair

The marquis de Carabas was not a good man, and he knew himself well enough to be perfectly certain that he was not a brave man. He had long since decided that the world, Above or Below, was a place that wished to be deceived, and, to this end, he had named himself from a lie in a fairy tale, and created himself
his clothes, his manner, his carriage
as a grand joke.
There was a dull pain in his wrists and his feet, and he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. There was nothing more to be gained by feigning unconsciousness, and he raised his head, as best he could, and spat a gob of scarlet blood into Mr. Vandemar's face.
It was a brave thing to do, he thought. And a stupid one. Perhaps they would have let him die quietly, if he had not done that. Now, he had no doubt, they would hurt him more.
And perhaps his death would come the quicker for it. — Neil Gaiman

The boys went off to fight with swords while girls had to learn dog barks and owl hoots. No wonder princesses were so impotent in fairy tales, she thought. If all they could do was smile, stand straight, and speak to squirrels, then what choice did they have but to wait for a boy to rescue them? — Soman Chainani

Away with them, away; we should not believe fairy stories if we wish to be good. Think of them as persons from the fairy wood. — Stevie Smith

I will always have a soft spot for 'East of the Sun, West of the Moon,' which I discovered just at the age when I was beginning to enjoy the darkness in fairy tales but still wanted a story where the good guys win. — Genevieve Valentine

You see them," James said. "The way they all love one another. I used to think everyone loved that way. The way it is in fairy tales. I used to think that love was giving and generous and good. — Cassandra Clare

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not. — Neil Gaiman

Bad government, like good government, is a spiritual thing. Even the tyrant never rules by force alone; but mostly by fairy tales. And so it is with the modern tyrant, — G.K. Chesterton

Please tell a story about a girl who gets away."
I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. "Gets away from what, though?"
"From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her."
"You don't want her to be happy and good?"
"I'm not sure what's really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin. — Helen Oyeyemi

But as she continued and finished her tale, I could tell that her heart was elsewhere, and when she excused herself to go to bed, she left without saying good night. After that, the princesses in her stories were always beautiful. Always. — Kelly Barnhill

Do you have children, Dominick?"
"Nope."
"Well if you did," she said, "you would most likely read them not only Curious George but also fables and fairy tales. Stories where humans outsmart witches, where giants and ogres are felled and good triumphs over evil. Your parents read them to you and your brother. Did they not?"
"My mother did," I said.
"Of course she did. It is the way we teach our children to cope with a world too large and chaotic for them to comprehend. A world that seems, at times, too random. Too indifferent. Of course, the religions of the world will do the same for you, whether you're a Hindu or a Christian or a Rosicrucian. They're brother and sister, really; children's fables and religious parables ... — Wally Lamb

I believe now that there's real fear of what happens once The Narrative blows up - because once we've ripped the rich to shreds, what we're left with is a whole bunch of broke people wondering where the hell their money went, without even a soothing fairy tale to help them get to sleep at night.
People in the financial community who actually worked in that world, the traders and the bankers themselves who joked with me about "those motherfuckers," did not have these illusions. You're not going to be good at making money if you need there to be a halo around the moneymaking process. The only people who really clung to those illusions were the financial commentators, right up to the point where those illusions became completely unsustainable. — Matt Taibbi

[T]he next time you hear serious-sounding people explaining the need for fiscal austerity, try to parse their argument. Almost surely, you'll discover that what sounds like hardheaded realism actually rests on a foundation of fantasy, on the belief that invisible vigilantes will punish us if we're bad and the confidence fairy will reward us if we're good. And real-world policy - policy that will blight the lives of millions of working families - is being built on that foundation. — Paul Krugman

We all love stories, even if they're not true. As we grow up, one of the ways we learn about the world is through the stories we hear. Some are about particular events and personalities within our personal circles of family and friends. Some are part of the larger cultures we belong to - the myths, fables, and fairy tales about our own ways of life that have captivated people for generations. In stories that are told often, the line between fact and myth can become so blurred that we easily mistake one for the other. This is true of a story that many people believe about education, even though it's not real and never really was. It goes like this: Young children go to elementary school mainly to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and mathematics. These skills are essential so they can do well academically in high school. If they go on to higher education and graduate with a good degree, they'll find a well-paid job and the country will prosper too. — Ken Robinson

Nabokov calls every great novel a fairy tale, I said. Well, I would agree. First, let me remind you that fairy tales abound with frightening witches who eat children and wicked stepmothers who poison their beautiful stepdaughters and weak fathers who leave their children behind in forests. But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it.
Every fairy tale offers the potential to surpass present limits, so in a sense the fairy tale offers you freedoms that reality denies. In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. — Azar Nafisi

Let me guess. You think we're going to live happily ever after, like some stupid fairy tale?"
"Why not?" His stare dared me to laugh or, worse, to argue.
"Because the whole thing is ridiculous," I said. I despised the bitterness in my own voice. I sounded so damaged. Good. If he thought I was his soul mate for some mysterious reason he wouldn't let on, let him see the worst of me.
"It's not ridiculous to me. Perhaps that's the difference between predators and prey, love. I'll never stop hunting. But I expect that one day, you'll stop running."
"Because I want to die?"
"Because you want to live. — Delilah S. Dawson

He rarely saw a doorway without advancing through it as if he owned it. Since he owned a good many doorways, he would have pointed out that this was a reasonable assumption. — Eloisa James

In stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, they always say the heroine is 'as good as she is beautiful.' I wondered if people just wanted that to be true, wanted the beautiful to be good. I wondered if they wanted the ugly to be bad because then they wouldn't have to feel bad for them. — Alex Flinn

If I had influence with the good fairy ... I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life. — Rachel Carson

And those characters [in a fairy tale] dwell in a moral world, whose laws are as clear as the law of gravity. That too is a great advantage of the folk tale. It is not a failure of imagination to see the sky blue. It is a failure rather to be weary of its being blue- and not to notice how blue it is. And appreciation of the subtler colors of the sky will come later. In the folk tale, good is good and evil is evil, and the former will triumph and later will fail. This is not the result of the imaginative quest. It is rather its principle and foundation. It is what will enable the child later on to understand Macbeth, or Don Quixote, or David Copperfield. — Anthony Esolen

I feel any time you enter a dream world it's like you're working out things, it's all inside your mind and you're working it out, be it Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the kids in Narnia, they go through this weird journey that's not real, and they're going through this journey psychologically. It's that journey of discovery, of getting onself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at. And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me they're more real than most things that are perceived as real. — Tim Burton

Then up he got with a light heart, free from all his troubles, and walked on till he reached his mother's house, and told her how very easy the road to good luck was. — Jacob Grimm

A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven ... Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. — Terry Pratchett

I just can't get with this idea that literature is a 12-step program. If someone wants to read a book to see good people get rewarded and the bad people get punished, essentially what they want is a fairy tale. — China Mieville

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

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! — William Makepeace Thackeray

It's because you're letting the fairy tales you grew up hearing in storybooks and the baseless ideas of love cloud your mind. Love isn't easy. Especially the really good kind. It's difficult, and you'll want to rip your hair out just as many days you'll feel the wind at your back." She paused smiling to herself. "But it's worth it. It's worth fighting for — Nicole Williams

What I mean is, all the terrible things that happen in fairy tales seem real. Or not real, but genuine. Life is unfair, and the bad guys keep winning and good people die. But I like how that's not always the end of it ... Evil is real, but so is good. They always say fairy tales are simplistic, black and white, but I don't think so. I think they're complicated. That's what I love about them. — Polly Shulman

Rap un zeal' Demon within. I might as well put up a giant 'Come and Get Eaten' sign for the good those warning runes do. — Sabrina Zbasnik

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

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

The bad mood fairy comes to annoy you only when you are actually in a good position, but don't yet realise it! — Jonathan Cainer

All the queens of my acquaintance have children, some three, some seven, and some as many as twelve; and my queen has not one. I feel ill-used." So he made up his mind to be cross with his wife about it. But she bore it all like a good patient queen as she was. — Hamilton Wright Mabie

Answers do not matter so much as questions, said the Good Fairy. A good question is very hard to answer. The better the question the harder the answer. There is no answer at all to a very good question. — Flann O'Brien

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

Well," I said, "I have to go."
He said, "Can I call you?"
I waited a long time before answering, though not, of course, as long as he'd made me wait. I let him stand there with the question in the air while I took a good long look at him, let him stand there while I stepped to the street and raised my arm for a cab. At exactly that moment, as though dispatched by some god I didn't really believe in anymore - the god of drama or god of perfect things - or maybe by my own fairy god god, a cab came. I got in, and closed the door. — Melissa Bank