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
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.
In music, on stage and on screen, fairy tales have always been guaranteed moneymakers. It's no wonder then, that in these difficult economic times, there are fairy tales everywhere you turn. From 'Once Upon a Time' and 'Grimm,' to 'Mirror, Mirror' and 'Snow White and the Huntsman.'
Alethea Kontis
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
Alexandre Dumas
I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.
Alice Hoffman
I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.
I didn't like fairy tales when I was younger. I found a lot of fairy tales scary. They really didn't sit well with me.
Amanda Seyfried
I found a lot of fairy tales scary. They really didn't sit well with me.
I grew up with Bible stories, which are like fairy tales, because my father was a minister. We heard verses and prayers every day. I liked the gorier Bible stories. I did have a book of Chinese fairy tales. All the people except the elders looked like Italians. But we were not a family that had fiction books.
Amy Tan
I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic.
Look at Jane Austen. Her characters derive in a reasonably straight line from fairy tales.
Andrew Davies
My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather.
Anne Lamott
I never grew up reading or fantasizing about fairy tales. I was always too busy, like, outside being a kid.
Armie Hammer
I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library.
Beverly Cleary
I want to tell women that you need to love yourself and make yourself a priority. It's only when you are happy yourself, can you make everyone else around you happy. I am still a dreamer and still believe in fairy tales, but there is only that much one should give another person. You need to keep something for yourself.
Bipasha Basu
The spark for 'In Praise of Slowness' came when I began reading to my children. Every parent knows that kids like their bedtime stories read at a gentle, meandering pace. But I used to be too fast to slow down with the Brothers Grimm. I would zoom through the classic fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, whole pages.
Carl Honore
I'll be left writing picture books and fairy tales.
Carol Ann Duffy
Just about every science whiz can tell you how he or she took apart the TV or the radio when they were kids just to see how it worked. To see what the world was made of. Well, when I was a kid, I took apart fairy tales to see how they worked. To see what the world was made of.
Catherynne M. Valente
I believe in fairy tales. They are the basis of all our performance of storytelling and film-making - when we twist the real events of the world into something that offers us hope - and I believe in that.
Charles Sturridge
God, people say 'Black Mirror' was horrible - it's nothing compared to the stuff that happens in 'Grimms' Fairy Tales.' It's mind-bending.
Charlie Brooker
What I like about fairy tales is that they highlight the emotions within a story. The situations aren't real, with falling stars and pirates. But what you do relate to is the emotions that the characters feel.
I had to grow up fast because we know it's not all fairy tales out there; it's full of rubbish.
I think, reading the Grimm's fairy tales, they all have some sort of moral component to them, teaching you a lesson.
If you are watching a fairy tale, that's why you go to fairy tales: you want these uncomplicated stories and uncomplicated characters. But if it's meant to be real life, you want there to be some reflection of your experience and have something you can hook into.
The forest has always been a place, in fairy tales and in Shakespeare, where you go and discover who you are. You get stripped of everything you thought you were, some type of ordeal takes place, and you come out stronger.
When you think of Grimm's fairy tales, they are deeply, deeply psychological. They're so powerful, so bloody, and really, really disturbing. Think about five-year-olds reading that stuff. Even 'Little Red Riding Hood' is a really freaky story. Grandma is gobbled up by a wolf, and the wolf is going to eat the girl. That's scary stuff.
I love monsters, I love creatures, I love beings, I love aliens. That's more supernatural and more the stuff of fairy tales. Fairy tales are as ancient as we are. I love those stories. I think they're really interesting because they always have more than simply the fright aspect. There's something deeply psychological.
I was raised on the brothers Grimm, but my favorite fairy tales in the world are Oscar Wilde's - 'The Nightingale and the Rose,' 'The Selfish Giant.' The latter is probably my all-time favorite.
In fairy tales, the children are saved by caring adults. We need more caring adults in the lives of our children.
The kids from the streets don't want preaching or messages. They want what they can identify with. They want to hear about the reality of their situation, not fairy tales. They don't care if it's ugly; they just want reality.
People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.
Fairy tales, before they were sanitized, were very dark, and kids love that. 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman feels like Beckett for kids. I think there's plenty of room for that. And I think there's a danger of being too patronizing to children, having things too sanitized.
Fairy tales were great because they provided a no-limits playground for my imagination, and growing up, there's nothing more exciting.
I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.
Conservatives used to believe in confronting hard truths, not succumbing to comforting fairy tales. Some still do.
In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.
I loved fairy tales as a kid, so that's where my mind gravitates.
As a child, I loved fairy tales because the story, the what-comes-next, is paramount. As an adult, I'm fascinated by their logic and illogic.
What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.
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.
Writing is writing to me. I'm incapable of saying no to any writing job, so I've done everything - historical fiction, myths, fairy tales, anything that anybody expresses any interest in me writing, I'll write. It's the same reason I used to read as a child: I like going somewhere else and being someone else.
I understand why society, especially American society, is gravitating toward fairy tales, given our economy. We've been exploring the world of witches and wizards for years. We've been exploring the world of vampires for years. Clearly the public - I mean, I feel like all of this was ushered in by 'Harry Potter' - in my own fannish beliefs.
Fairy tales read before bed tend to make me dream. They're all quite violent stories, as are my dreams.
I always wanted to be on 'Sesame Street,' that kind of a thing, puppets and fun and original songs and fairy tales.
Recasting fairy tales has become a publishing sub-genre in itself, and has been done both well and to the point of entropy. More interesting are those works where the structures of fairytales are abandoned but the world of 'fairy' is imported as a delicate spice.
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.
My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grimm's fairy tales. I even saw a theater production of 'Tom Thumb' during Advent at the State Theater in Danzig, which my mother took me to see.
Fairy tales, because they have a very clear structure, are easier to interfere with. Also they have this really weird logic: the kind of logic that you only really experience when you're not feeling very well, or as a child.
All the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark.
What I personally gravitate toward tends to be fantasy, medium dark - not too dark - fairy tales and sci fi. Stop-motion takes something on the page that's really dark and adds a little sweetness to it, a living toys realm.
