The folktale is the primer of the picture-language of the…

I've always been fascinated by the grassroots folktale level of a culture, and as a storyteller, I have to follow what seems to be…

— Robin McKinley

The protagonist of folktale is always, and intensely, a young person moving through ordeals into adult life. . . . and this is why…

— Jill Paton Walsh

A garden is not a picture, but a language.

— Henry Mitchell

The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was…

— Jesse L. Martin

You can give me any of Shakespeare's plays and I'll tell you a parallel African folktale.

— John Kani

“What Can Be Learned From a Thief The saintly Rabi Zusya was originally a disciple of the tsaddik Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritsh. Once…

— Pinhas Sadeh

“I love the way folktale and fantasy tap into the roots of story telling. The paradox, for me, is that by moving a story…

— Guy Gavriel Kay

“Stories are the things people use to give the universe a shape...there is little difference between a folktale, a religous revelation, and a scientific…

— Tad Williams

“An important dimension of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is its debt to the oral tradition; to stories about wronged milkmaids, tales of superstition, and…

— Geoffrey Harvey

“The folktale world is oriented positively toward its protagonist; a folktale is defined by the hero's triumph: magic weapons and helpers are, with the…

— Darko Suvin

“A storm in Scotland was like nothing she'd ever experienced in London. Here, the elements felt alive, sentient. This storm was a raging monster…

— Karen Ranney

“Everybody knew that Theodore Dinkins was dead. But Theodore Dinkins sat on the graveyard fence and said that he was not; and grew angry…

— John Bennett

Once upon a time . . .” “In the beginning was . . .” That’s the way it always starts off. Every story, gospel,…

— Steven Tyler

While writing 'Cold Mountain,' I held maps of two geographies, two worlds, in my mind as I wrote. One was an early map of…

— Charles Frazier