Grace Lin Quotes

So many different countries have got their version of what Merlin is: the Scottish say he Scottish, the Welsh say he's Welsh, the French say he's French.

A myth is something that never was but that is always happening.

I love stories, I love myths, I love fairytales, I love Kafka.

Fairy tales since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, have been “a means to conquer the terrors of mankind through metaphor.

At the centre of every fairy tale lay a truth that gave the story its power

A tale in everything.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

The moon in her chariot of pearl

They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.

(I am) dealing not with the particular anecdote, but rather with the Spirit of Myth, which is generic to all myths at all times.

Not the man in the moon, not the groaning-board, not the speaking of friar Bacon's brazen- head, not the inspiration of mother Shipton, or the miracles of Dr. Faustus, things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed.

If you hear an old parable and you don't believe it, it's mythology. If you hear an old parable and you believe it, it's religion.

Storytelling is the game. It's what we all do.

I think people are interested in anything that's a little bigger than life and that's colorful and - you know, what they like? They like fairy tales for grownups.

Behind every myth lies a truth; beyond every legend is reality, as radiant (sometimes as chilling) as the story itself.

Facts interest me less than the trailing smoke of stories.

At the heart of every legend there is a grain of truth.

It wasn't for nothing that the raven was just now croaking on my left hand.

If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - What would you tell him?" I…don't know. What…could he do? What would you tell him?" To shrug.

A yokel mind loves stories from of old, Being the kind it can repeat and hold.

All the truth in the world is held in stories.

Before the gods that made the gods Had seen their sunrise pass, The White Horse of the White Horse Vale Was cut out of the grass.

She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.

And sometimes through the mirror blue The knights come riding two and two.