Fairy Stories

Famous quotes containing the words fairy stories, fairy and/or stories:

    A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically change into a most helpful friend is ready to believe that a strange child whom he meets and fears may also be changed from a menace into a desirable companion.
    Bruno Bettelheim (20th century)

    What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.
    Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)

    Though Margery is stricken dumb
    If thrown in Madge’s way,
    We three make up a solitude;
    For none alive to-day
    Can know the stories that we know
    Or say the things we say....
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)