Tall Tale Quotes & Sayings

I love your stories. Tell me a story, Idgie. Go on, you old bee charmer. Tell me a good tall tale. Tell me the one about the lake. ~Ruth Jamison — Fannie Flagg

I've tried to show in my most recent book, the 'Irresistible Fairytale', that in order to talk about any genre, particularly what we call simple genre - a myth, a legend, an anecdote, a tall tale, and so on - we really have to understand something about the origin of stories all together. — Jack Zipes

The Long and the Short and the Tall made a great impression on me because it was a very ugly tale about the reality of soldiering at a time when we were being gung-ho about the whole thing of war. — Timothy West

The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high ... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time. — Stephen King

The magic is as wide as a smile and as narrow as a wink, loud as laughter and quiet as a tear, tall as a tale and deep as emotion. So strong, it can lift the spirit. So gentle, it can touch the heart. It is the magic that begins the happily ever after. — Walt Disney

From the book "Age of Armageddon: The Spirit of Krynn"

"Is this another tall tale?" Eva quickly asks her suspicion aroused by the Minstrels previous teasing trick. Although it is unlikely that he actually did meet the keeper of the dead, he sold it well enough. Fantasy is a little more believable when you can throw 50,000 volt lightning from your fingertips. — Ryan Tyler Palmer

APRIL 16. Away! Away!
The spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations. They are held out to say: We are alone - come. And the voices say with them: We are your kinsmen. And the air is thick with their company as they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth. — James Joyce

It's the age-old tale of complacency, Shea." The tall warrior sighed deeply and stretched as he rose. "We may be standing on the brink of the greatest war in a thousand years, but no one wants to accept the fact. Everyone gets in the same rut - let a few take care of the gates to the city while the rest forget and go back to their homes. It becomes a habit - depending on a few to protect the rest. And then one day ... the few are not enough, and the enemy is within the city - right through the open gates ... — Terry Brooks

I've always been into having stories told to me. I was a voracious reader, my father was also a teller of tales; and the kind of Baron Munchausen proxy of a tall tale was much more interesting than a true tale. — Damon Lindelof

I lifted the latch, and there he stood, dark and tall, the scholar's gown falling from his shoulders like the cloak of the Black Knight in the old tale. His arms were laden with boughs of apple blossom. He lifted a branch, high over my head, and shook it, so that the petals showered me, releasing a heady scent that promised spring. — Geraldine Brooks

Like all the girls back then I knew that being too clever was much worse than being too tall. Being five foot three, tongue-tied and blonde I mostly passed muster, except that I was so unskilled in small talk that I sometimes blurted big words (hypocrisy, or pretentiousness), which jumped out of my mouth like the toads of the fairy tale before I knew it. In any case, you could cultivate the wrong sort of silence - the sort that implied brooding self-absorption rather than attentiveness. — Lorna Sage

The business of lying is transacted in the abode of the gullible. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Not only do we all have magic, it's all around us as well. We just don't pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that's an act of magic. It doesn't matter if it's a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that's broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that's an act of magic.

And what makes it magic is that we *choose* to create or help, just as we can choose to harm. But it's so easy to destroy and so much harder to make things better. That's why doing the right thing makes you stronger.

If we can only remember what we are and what we can do, nobody can bind us or control us. — Charles De Lint

Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought - and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds. — Vladimir Nabokov