J. R. R. Tolkien Quotes

Myths are so intimately bound to culture, time, and place that unless the symbols, the metaphors, are kept alive by constant recreation through the arts, the life just slips away from them.

Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama.

Fairy tales are with us day in and day out, not just in commercials, but references in the theater, movies, museums, schools, etc.

Legends are material to be moulded, and not facts to be recorded.

I loved all the world's mythologies.

Indians are marvelous storytellers. In some ways, that oral tradition is stronger than the written tradition.

A nation that has no music and no fairytales is a tragedy.

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.

The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.

The human race has always defined itself through narration. That isn't going to change just because we've gone electronic. What is changing is that now we're allowing corporations to tell our stories for us.

I rarely use mythology for its own sake because, as a theatre person, the mythological figures are in fact humanity to the ninth degree and Yoruba mythology in particular has fascination of being one of the most humanised mythologies in the world.

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

I love telling stories. I think of myself as a storyteller, and I don't feel bound by being just a singer or an actress. First, I'm a storyteller, and history is stories - the most compelling stories. There is a lot you can find out about yourself through knowing about history. I have always been attracted to things that are old. I have just always found such things interesting and compelling.

It is only the story...that saves our progeny from blundering like blind beggars into the spikes of the cactus fence.The story is our escort;without it,we are blind.Does the blind man own his escort?No,neither do we the story;rather,it is the story that owns us.

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.

Stories--individual stories, family stories, national stories--are what stitch together the disparate elements of human existence into a coherent whole. We are story animals.

Once upon a time fairy tales were told to audiences of young and old alike. It is only in the last century that such tales were deemed fit only for small children, stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight.

It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.

I belong to an ancient, idle, wild and useless tribe, perhaps I am even one of the last members of it, who for many thousands of years, in all countries and parts of the world, has, now and again, stayed for a time among the hard-working honest people in real life, and sometimes has thus been fortunate enough to create another sort of reality for them, which in some way or another, has satisfied them. I am a storyteller.

I'm not trying to explain other cultures, or to give a fair and balanced account of a country, or the top ten things you need to know. I'm not trying to spread world peace and understanding. I'm not an advocate or an activist or an educator or a journalist. I'm out there trying to tell stories the best I can.

They say a story loses something with each telling.

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth'.

Storytelling is the oldest form of education.

Human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.