A Quote by William Irwin Thompson

Fairy tales and myths are forms of cultural storage for the natural history of life.

William Irwin Thompson

Quote Topics

Cultural Fairy Fairy Tale Fairy Tales Forms History History Of Life Life Myths Natural Natural History Storage Tales

Quote Author

William Irwin Thompson
American - Philosopher
Born: July 16, 1938

What the Greeks and Romans considered myths, we consider fairy tales. We can see how very clearly the myths, which emanated from all cultures, had a huge influence on the development of the modern fairy tale.

Jack Zipes

Fairy tales are my natural language. I feel at ease telling fairy tales like a fish feels in water. I am totally free.

Michel Ocelot

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.

Northrop Frye

I have been writing fairy tales for as long as I can remember. Not much has changed in terms of my natural attraction to the narrative techniques of fairy tales. My appreciation of them in the traditional stories has deepened, especially of flat and unadorned language, intuitive logic, abstraction, and everyday magic.

Kate Bernheimer

[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.

Alice Hoffman

The fact that fairy tales remain a literary underdog - undervalued and undermined - even as they shape so many popular stories, redoubles my certainty that it is time for contemporary fairy tales to be celebrated in a popular, literary collection. Fairy tales hold the secret to reading.

Kate Bernheimer

My inspiration is my life, what I see happening around me. It can be history and, quite often, plain traditional fairy tales. But I never adapt; I nourish myself with old stories, and then create my own tales.

Michel Ocelot

I think almost everybody enjoyed fairy tales when they were young, tales of witches and ogres and monsters and dragons and so forth. You get a little bit older, you can't read fairy tales any more.

Stan Lee

I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.

Mike Myers

Do you believe in fairy tales?" "What...what kind of fairy tales?" "The kind you aren't supposed to waste your life on.

Richelle Mead

I have always been fascinated by the supernatural elements in stories, whether fairy tales, myths, film or literature.

Trudi Canavan

I was born and raised in Ohio. During my childhood, I spent most of my time drawing and reading fairy tales and myths.

Natalie Babbitt

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

When fairy tales are written in the west, they're known as folklore. In the east, fairy tales are called religions.

Paul Henderson

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.