Folk Tales Quotes

In 1893, Miss M. Roalfe Cox brought together, in a volume of the Folk-Lore Society, no less than 345 variants of 'Cinderella' and kindred stories showing how widespread this particular formula was throughout Europe and how substantially identical the various incidents as reproduced in each particular country.

...belief has a second edge. If there are ten thousand medieval peasants who create vampires by believing them real, there may be one - probably a child - who will imagine the stake necessary to kill it. But a stake is only stupid wood; the mind is the mallet which drives it home.

Though the Grimms kept about 100 of the tales from the first edition, they changed them a good deal.

Sometimes fairy stories may say best what's to be said.

Folk tales, fairy tales, religion, the occult - these are the things I'm most passionate about, even more than cinema. And I'm very passionate about cinema.

Stories are made up by people who make them up. If they work, they get retold. There's the magic of it.

I recollected one story there was in the village, how that on a certain night in the year (it might be that very night for anything I knew), all the dead people came out of the ground and sat at the heads of their own graves till morning.

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

The Grimm brothers always said that their informants were women, which is possibly not true, women of the people. There is the constant evocation of women's voices, in the collecting and arrangement of these stories, and yet the message of so many of them is incredibly misogynist. I was very puzzled by that, and that book explores that contradiction.

How can I be a folk? I'm from the suburbs you know.

In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

Those so-called records in the Bible were written by devout ecclesiasts who wanted to believe, and wanted others to believe, in the coming of a Messiah. Until someone proves otherwise, therefore, these stories must be considered nothing more than folk tales consisting in equal parts of legend and wish fulfillment.

That's the thing about a folk tale: It is always addressing incredibly key issues about how you should live and what the right thing to do is, which is really what I'm the most interested in - like the questions that religion takes on. And I think that, for those of us that aren't religious, we need, or I need, art that stimulates the same kind of thinking about what it is to be a mensch, or a good man, things like that.

The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.

It's quite a thing, if you've never been in or known a small southern town. The people are not particularly sophisticated, naturally. They're not worldly wise in any way. But they tell you a story whenever they see you.

Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut. Mama, Mama, help me get home I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own. I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck. Mama, Mama, put me to bed I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead. I met an Invalid, and fell for his art He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. -From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales

Fairy tales and folk tales have always played a role in my writing in one way or another.

Bare Foot Folk and is full of really interesting songs, Ange Hardy takes folk tales and creates new folk songs that sound traditional around the story. This is one she's called mother willow tree, it's beautiful

There's a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called 'funny animal scrolls' were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions.

Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.

I know about various fictional and folkloric vampire mythoses the way other people know about the personal life of celebrities.

The Celtic folk-tales have been collected while the practice of story-telling is still in full vigour, though there is every sign that its term of life is already numbered.