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 »
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 »
Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosm...ic triumph. Whereas the former--the youngest or despised child who becomes the master of extraordinary powers--prevails over his personal oppressors, the latter brings back from his adventure the means for the regeneration of his society as a whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Child of the pure unclouded brow And dreaming eyes of wonder!... Though time be fleet, and I and thou Are half a life asunder, Thy loving smile will surely hail The love-gift of a fairy-tale.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The human spirit is itself the most wonderful fairy tale that can possibly be. What a magnificent world lies enclosed within our b...osoms! No solar orbit hems it in, the inexhaustible wealth of the total visible creation is outweighed by its riches!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty--this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air th...e arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... and the next summer she died in childbirth. That's all. Of course, there may be some sort of sequel but it is not known ...to me. In such cases instead of getting bogged down in guesswork, I repeat the words of the merry king in my favorite fairy tale: Which arrow flies for ever? The arrow that has hit its mark.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ideally a painter (and, generally, an artist) should not become conscious of his insights: without taking the detour through his r...eflective processes, and incomprehensibly to himself, all his progress should enter so swiftly into the work that he is unable to recognise them in the moment of transition. Alas, the artist who waits in ambush there, watching, detaining them, will find them transformed like the beautiful gold in the fairy tale which cannot remain gold because some small detail was not taken care of.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and... not allow themselves to be deluded, life ... would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »