Tale Quotes

“We shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually — their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on — and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same — like old Mr Bilbo. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of a tale we've fallen into?”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“When I was a boy, my mother would tell me that one of the best things in life is the knowledge that our story isn't over yet. Our story may have come to a close, but your story is still yet to be told.
Make it a story worthy of you”
― Renee Ahdieh, The Wrath and the Dawn

“People who don’t construe their life and don’t frame their own tale, stay on the sidelines, remain only an act without a story and turn into an "empty box". Out-of-the-box thinking and inventiveness remains then merely wishfull thinking. ( "Everybody his story" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Comes the tipping point in life, when we decide to a ‘stop and search’ and our emotional police bring us to a standstill. This allows us to scan all the little details in the spectrum of our being; scour all fuzzy or cryptic elements that are floating around in our mind and restore the fault lines in the cluttered tale of our life. ("The world was somewhere else")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You know, considering your IQ, you're really socially retarded sometimes.”
― Shannon Delany, 13 to Life

“There is but one world and everything that is imaginable is necessary to it. For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale. And all in it is a tale and each tale the sum of all lesser tales and yet these are also the selfsame tale and contain as well all else within them. So everything is necessary. Every least thing. This is the hard lesson. Nothing can be dispensed with. Nothing despised. Because the seams are hid from us, you see. The joinery. The way in which the world is made. We have no way to know what could be taken away. What omitted. We have no way to tell what might stand and what might fall. And those seams that are hid from us are of course in the tale itself and the tale has no abode or place of beind except in the telling only and there it lives and makes its home and therefore we can never be done with the telling. Of the telling there is no end. And . . . in whatever . . . place by whatever . . . name or by no name at all . . . all tales are one. Rightly heard all tales are one.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing

“You need mountains, long staircases don't make good hikers.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“October knew, of course, that the action of turning a page, of ending a chapter or shutting a book, did not end the tale.
Having admitted that, he would also avow that happy endings were never difficult to find: "It is simply a matter," he explained to April, "of finding a sunny place in a garden, where the light is golden and the grass is soft; somewhere to rest, to stop reading, and to be content.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One... I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.”
― The Bhagavad Gita

“The nutcracker sits under the holiday tree, a guardian of childhood stories. Feed him walnuts and he will crack open a tale...”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Life isn't a fairytale but we can make it like a fairytale”
― Lucy 'Aisy

“Once upon a time, the Reindeer took a running leap and jumped over the Northern Lights.

But he jumped too low, and the long fur of his beautiful flowing tail got singed by the rainbow fires of the aurora.

To this day the reindeer has no tail to speak of. But he is too busy pulling the Important Sleigh to notice what is lost. And he certainly doesn’t complain.

What's your excuse?”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Why do travelers depart as they do, leaving an incomplete tale of footprints in the earth.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Can you tell me what happened?"

Her lips thinned as she shook her head. "'Tis not a happy tale."

"You have me reading a book about a girl who tries to kill an entire town. Anything else at this point would be a pick me up.”
― Jenny B. Jones, There You'll Find Me

“I'll tell you a secret.

Old storytellers never die.

They disappear into their own story.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Two forces create eternity – a fairy tale and a dream from the fairy tale.”
― Dejan Stojanovic

“And that’s how it is in this world, boy. Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce.”
― Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools

“Everyone listened to this amusing narrative with great interest, and the moment that Behemoth concluded it, they all shouted in unison: 'Lies!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“You can’t tell half a tale, Poison. You can’t write half a book. Whatever you choose to do next will completely change the aspect of what has gone before. if you decided to suddenly kill your friends as they slept –“
Why would I do that?” Poison interjected.
Bear with me,” Fleet said patiently. “If you did, then the tale would take on a whole new light. Instead of being the journey of Poison from Gull to save her sister, it would be the terrible story of how a young girl became a cold-blooded killer. They way it would be written would be different. Do you see? Or you might die right now, and it would turn out that it wasn’t your tale all along it was Bram’s or Peppercorn’s, and you were just one of the sideline characters. The whole story has to be known before it can be recorded; otherwise it might suddenly change. That’s the beauty, Poison. You never know what’s going to happen next. When the tale is ended, then the writing will be visible to your eyes; until then it is unwritten.”
― Chris Wooding, Poison

“Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history”
― Gregory Maguire, Son of a Witch

“The implication of this particular tale is: Trust strangers. Believe in magic.”
― Michael Cunningham, A Wild Swan: And Other Tales

“It is a tale that you sing. As long as you believe it, it makes you powerful.”
― Kieron Gillen, The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 9: Okay

“Ketika kau memiliki firasat buruk tentang kehilangan orang yang paling berharga, kau akan mencoba untuk tidak mempercayainya. Tetapi jika kelak firasat itu semakin nyata, kau akan melakukan apa pun untuk menjaga orang yang paling berharga itu. Sekalipun akhirnya kau tetap kehilangannya!”
― K.A.Z_Violin, Eldar: Violin & Negeri Salju Abadi

“Di tempat paling dingin sekalipun... selalu ada cerita hangat,”
― K.A.Z_Violin, Eldar: Violin & Negeri Salju Abadi

“Demi Eldar..., demi Eldar yang mereka bilang aku khianati..., aku akan mendapatkanmu lagi!!”
― K.A.Z_Violin, Eldar: Violin & Negeri Salju Abadi

“Sugar candy tasted better than bitter truth.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and buck-toothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.”
― Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain

“The Wolf and the Good Shepherd (tale)

It is said that a long time ago, a wolf stalked the sheep of shepherds on the outskirts of London. He was a strong wolf, with beautiful fur and soft, seductive speech. He had eaten many sheep from many shepherds and boasted about it. However, he had never managed to eat any of Pastor Jack's sheep, who was old and very careful, always keeping an eye on his flock, which was also not very large. Still, it was the best cared for herd in the Kingdom. He was always well fed, cared for, groomed and disease-free. The wolf was very angry with Pastor Jack, because he had once tried to eat a small sheep from the flock and the shepherd hit him hard on the head with his staff. On the wolf's face, a large scar reminded him of that incident. One day, seeing that some sheep had strayed away from the flock, the wolf thought: “well, I'm not going to attack them, since killing or two wouldn't satisfy me. I want the pastor.” His sheep approached and the wolf bent down and pretended to be afraid, and the sheep said to him: “what animal are you and why are you afraid, we are just sheep”. The wolf then said: “I'm afraid of sheep, once your shepherd, a very cruel man attacked me and hurt me and since then, even though I'm a wolf, I've only eaten grass”. The sheep looked at him, with an expression of doubt, but kindness being the essential nature of sheep, they believed him and said: “it can't be Pastor Jack, he is very kind, he always takes care of us, he is always attentive to us” . The wolf then got up and looking at them said: “you are wrong, he just wants you to take your wool, don't you see that he is a tyrant who rules you, who takes you here and there, and you don't they can have a little fun, be free like me, walk through the forest, go wherever I want – he’s always with that cruel stick pulling them and taking them wherever he wants.” The sheep then listened carefully and returned to the flock. When they returned to the herd, the others said that they had spoken to a wolf, that it had not attacked them and that it had told them the story about the shepherd. The next day, more sheep went to the boundary between the field and the forest and there they met the wolf, who told the same story, but this time sadder. They all raged against the shepherd and said: “Friend wolf, you have been so kind to us and told us the truth, we had never thought about how the shepherd oppresses us, tomorrow we will tell all the sheep what happened and we will run away from Pastor Jack ”. And so it was, the next day, all the sheep went to the edge of the forest, something that the shepherd found strange, having followed them. The wolf then said to them: “come with me into the forest, dear friends, I will show you how good it is to be free”. And so, they all went into the forest, with the shepherd following them, watching them from afar. At one point, the sheep got lost and the shepherd shouted loudly and called them. The wolf, then, taking advantage of the mess, attacked the shepherd first, like a jugular bite in the throat. Afterwards, he had fun running after each of the sheep and killing them, without even eating the meat. The last sheep, before being killed, said to the wolf: “you were so kind to us, why are you doing this? We have never seen a smile from the pastor and you are so friendly.” The wolf then said to her: “sympathy is not synonymous with care or devotion. The pastor may never have given you a smile, but he cares just like you. I, on the other hand, pretended to be short-lived and now I was able to eat all of you and take revenge on the pastor.” Moral of the story: “the wolf will always like the sheep that he can attack and devour and will always hate the Shepherd”.”
― Geverson Ampolini

“Her hurt was soft and dark and it had arms to hold me as if I were an infant. I sank into her soft dark arms, into a story of a wicked little girl who stepped on a loaf and fell into a world of demons and deformed creatures.”
― Mary Gaitskill;, Veronica

“An ancient and medieval tale that I just invented. In a tiny village deep in the countryside, an old lady and a priest were constantly at odds. He called her a witch, and she called him a sanctimonious fool. She maintained an independent, critical stance, always alert to the priest’s failings. He, on the other hand, could no longer tolerate the constant provocations of the elderly lady. Until one day, the old lady discovered and spread throughout the village the secret affair between the priest and a widow from the community. The priest, immediately, in a frenzy, went to the center of the village and declared to all: “The old woman who spread these lies is a witch! Let’s burn her!” The old woman, who was passing by, approached the priest, looked him in the eyes, and said: “In your eyes, I may look like a witch for telling the truth. But as for you, who dresses with airs of holiness, despite the sins you hide beneath your robes... If I am to go to the stake, let it be with good wood. As for you, you will burn in hell. And that’s that.”
― Geverson Ampolini