A Quote by Terri Windling
Why are so many of us enspelled by myths and folk stories in this modern age? Why do we continue to tell the same old tales, over and over again? I think it's because these stories are not just fantasy. They're about real life. We've all encountered wicked wolves, found fairy godmothers, and faced trial by fire. We've all set off into unknown woods at one point in life or another. We've all had to learn to tell friend from foe and to be kind to crones by the side of the road. . . .
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My mom used to tell me stories at night, read books to me - and I read 'em over and over and over again. And you know what I learned from that? I went back and looked at everything - Why do I like reading the same stories over and over and over again? What, was I some kind of nincompoop? No - the narrative gave me connection with my mom.
I think it's why we're able to look at with comic book stories or origin stories, why is it that we can keep retelling these stories over and over? And hopefully it's because it hits something so universal and so primal inside of us that we actually yearn for that same story over and over. But toned and different form, and updated and modernized, and I can go into the specifics.
What does it matter, if we tell the same old stories? ...Stories tell us who we are. What we’re capable of. When we go out looking for stories we are, I think, in many ways going in search of ourselves, trying to find understanding of our lives, and the people around us. Stories, and language tell us what’s important.
Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.
I'm a lover of film and storytelling. I believe that I was put on earth to tell stories, and I'm not interested in telling the same stories over and over and over again.
[Fairy tales] are like a journey to the woods and the many ways you can get lost. Some people say it's not a good idea to read fairy tales to anyone under the age of eight because they are brutal and raw. When I was a kid I often felt that kids's books were speaking down to me, but I never felt that way about fairy tales. They are bloody and scary, but so is life.
Though now we think of fairy tales as stories intended for very young children, this is a relatively modern idea. In the oral tradition, magical stories were enjoyed by listeners young and old alike, while literary fairy tales (including most of the tales that are best known today) were published primarily for adult readers until the 19th century.
I understood that the stories we believe have power over us. They work into our bodies and minds and change us from inside out. What if one day these stories become something stronger, more real, than fairy tales?
I think the big thing is the fairy tale. It's taking old folk fairy tales and retelling them in modern day. I think it's just taking you out of everyday life, and everyone loves a good fairy tale.
I think we need stories, and we need to tell the stories over and over and over not only to remind us, but to be able to have that clarity of experience that changes us, so that we know who we are now because of who we have been at some other time.
We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water.
Folk tales and myths, they've lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.
I'm removed in my real life, and unable to express certain things face to face. So I have always found myself in this fantasy world. That's why I started writing songs and stories from a very young age. I'd much rather walk around anonymously cooking up tales than face the people that I have known forever.
The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.
Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.
When we come back to fantasy, I think we're actually coming back to the real bedrock of storytelling. Our national or international genre really is fantasy, if you think about the worldwide myths and legends and stories that we all know, whether we're talking about Little Red Riding Hood or the Arabian Nights or Noah's Ark or Hercules. These are stories that cross many cultures in much the same way that dragons cross many cultures.
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