Tariq Ali Quotes

Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.

I believe in elves and giants. I believe that fairy tales are nothing more than news reports of what once happened.

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

They were kind of like little Stephen King stories... but these go back many hundreds of years.

Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since mankind first started telling stories.

Myth is, after all, the neverending story.

In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind, it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.

I was always interested in myths growing up. So, first I got into some Roman myths, then I was interested in Norse, then Celtic, then I started spreading to all the other mythologies.

I like mythology - anything historical.

My first memory of the public library is of lugging home a volume of Norse myths as heavy as a thunder-god's hammer.

Actually, I love mythology. When I was a kid I was obsessed with myth and I wanted to be a mythologist when I grew up. Then I realized I really just like stories.

Most of the monsters... are based on some sort of mythology. Every culture and even some geographical areas have monsters and mythology that is their own.

People have always had a fascination with the supernatural going back to the beginning of time and with vampires in particular. This phenomenon is not new.

As you study vampire legend throughout history, it goes back to almost every culture. South Africa, Indonesia, crazy places have that legend and that idea of immortality.

I do love mythology.

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

One of the great advantages of the study of old Norse or Icelandic literature is the insight given by it into the origin of world-wide superstitions. Norse tradition is transparent as glacier ice, and its origin is as unmistakable.

I love reading all the mythological stories. I was brought up on them.

I used to like Norse mythology, Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology. All mythology!

I've always been interested in oral traditions and mythological stories and legends from antiquity that have to do with nature, attempts to explain mysterious or puzzling, or very striking phenomena from nature. Things that people observed or heard about in nature.

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

The things I encounter that I call elves or gnomes, it's just a gloss. I mean, they're small, and they have the archetype. They're more like leprechauns, and this maybe raises a racial issue.

Faeries are equally loyal and deceitful.

No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . .