Traditional Narratives Quotes

There are storytelling traditions that come from Africa that are unique from anywhere else.

Myths can't be translated as they did in their ancient soil. We can only find our own meaning in our own time.

Our thinking is permeated by our historical myths

Kami'd always retold her fairy tales to make the fair maidens braver and more self-sufficient, but she had never had any real objection to the handsome prince.

I don't have a specific message for 'The Grace of Kings' and the sequels in mind other than wanting to challenge some of the source material I was working from as well as some of the assumptions of epic fantasy.

Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.

Folklore provides a socially sanctioned outlet for the discussion of the forbidden and taboo.

Spy novels are traditionally about lone wolves, but how many people actually live like that?

The greatest art in the world is the art of storytelling.

I tend to think of a myth and then explore how it would play out if it were happening in the modern-day world. I modify all the myths I use, but I stick very closely to their structure - it is the hidden teacher in me.

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas.

Folk tales and myths, they've lasted for a reason. We tell them over and over because we keep finding truths in them, and we keep finding life in them.

The bearers of fables are very welcome.

I love studying folklore and legends. The stories that people passed down for a thousand years without any sort of marketing support are obviously saying something appealing about the basic human condition.

Nowhere else is there so large and consistent a body of oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the Gaels.

The thing is, fairytales were once a very gritty way for people to dialogue about aspects of life.

I think story-telling is innate in human beings, it's something that we've done since we scrawled across cave walls.

By recycling pre-existing material, Shakespeare seemed to endorse a view common in his time, which has become even more entrenched in the 400 years since: that all the truly essential stories are already in the bag.

Most traditional ghost stories feature rather hapless protagonists, who have nasty things happen to them.

Often culture gets stuck in static, traditional narratives. Contemporary ideas give culture elasticity, flexibility, which is always a breath of fresh air. But these ideas shouldn't only be for people who can afford to go to a museum or a symposium in the "better part of town."

The two basic stories of all times are Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer-the charm of women and the courage of men.

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

Maybe even at six or seven, I knew that, sweet as they were on the surface, all fairy tales needed a feminist shake up.

We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity.

If there be a mind that, not perceiving in the narratives we have compared the fingermarks of tradition, and hence the legendary character of these evangelical anecdotes, still leans to the historical interpretation, whether natural or supernatural; that mind must be alike ignorant of the true character both of legend and of history, of the natural and the supernatural.