William Butler Yeats Quotes

And Loplop, bird superior, has transformed himself into flesh without flesh and will dwell among us.

Fairy tales are stories of triumph and transformation and true love, all things I fervently believe in.

This process is alchemy: its founder is the smith Vulcan.

I looked about me once again, and suddenly the dancing horses without number changed into animals of every kind and into all the fowls that are, and these fled back to the four quarters of the world from whence the horses came, and vanished.

I was afraid that not even Merlin the Enchanter could transform me into a writer.

I'm like Loki in Nordic mythology: one day I'll be a woman and the next day a snake.

I want to ride a unicorn.

Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows the secret of change, only he knows truly that all things are crouched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.

Once upon a time' These are the most magical words our world has ever known and the gateway to the greatest stories ever told. They're an immediate calling to anyone who hears them-a calling into a world where everyone is welcome and anything can happen. Mice can become men, maids can become princesses, and they can teach valuable lessons in the process.

...no place is more enchanted than where a unicorn has been born.

Notes for a ballet, The Spell: ... Suddenly Sigmund hears the flutter of wings, and a group of wild swans flies across the moon ... Sigmund is astounded to see that their leader is part swan and part woman - unfortunately, divided lengthwise. She enchants Sigmund, who is careful not to make any poultry jokes.

The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter's power.

This is the story of a boy who used to be a wolf, and a girl who became one

If there is one ‘constant’ in the structure and theme of the wonder tale, it is transformation.

The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness.

To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore.

The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into... A monkey? I think not.

Who knows not Circe, The daughter of the Sun , whose charmed cup Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a groveling swine?

Once you have been touched by magic, you are forever changed. You leave a trail.

In grammar school they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fairy tale. In the university they taught me that a frog turning into a prince was a fact!

Everything changes, even stone.

Midnight, and the clock strikes. It is Christmas Day, the werewolves birthday, the door of the solstice still wide enough open to let them all slink through.

Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.

Lucy looked and saw that Aslan had just breathed on the feet of the stone giant. It's all right!" shouted Aslan joyously. "Once The feet are put right, all the rest of him will follow.

We need metaphors of magic and monsters in order to understand the human condition.