Although the same exemplary figures are found in both and equally miraculous events occur in both, there is a crucial difference i...n the way these are communicated. Put simply, the dominant feeling a myth conveys is: this is absolutely unique; it could not have happened to any other person, or in any other setting; such events are grandiose, awe-inspiring, and could not possibly happen to an ordinary mortal like you or me. The reason is not so much that what takes place is miraculous, but that it is described as such. By contrast, although the events which occur in fairy tales are often unusual and most improbable, they are always presented as ordinary, something that could happen to you or me or the person next door when out on a walk in the woods. Even the most remarkable encounters are related in casual, everyday ways in fairy tales.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child... who has learned from fairy stories to believe that what at first seemed a repulsive, threatening figure can magically c...hange 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.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You spotted snakes with double tongue, Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen.... Newts and blindworms, do no wrong, Come not near our Fairy Queen.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fairy. Those that "Hobgoblin" call you, and "Sweet Puck," You do their work, and they shall have good luck.... Are not you he? Puck. Thou speakest aright; I am that merry wanderer of the night.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most p...eople go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that ...was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Fairy tales are loved by the child not because the imagery he finds in them conforms to what goes on within him, but because--desp...ite all the angry, anxious thoughts in his mind to which the fairy tale gives body and specific content--these stories always result in a happy outcome, which the child cannot imagine on his own.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A parent who from his own childhood experience is convinced of the value of fairy tales will have no difficulty in answering his c...hild's questions; but an adult who thinks these tales are only a bunch of lies had better not try telling them; he won't be able to related them in a way which would enrich the child's life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »