Our traditional stories are based on an aristocratic model without a middle class, whereas The Arabian Nights reflect people living in cities, traders, merchants, travelers, with a wide range of personalities. — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
“Ectoplasm is shapeless, it is “informe,” a kind of primordial paste—and to show itself as this, it annexes semiotic markers that designate intermediate spirit worlds. When looking at these fluid, inchoate forms, sometimes imprinted with a face, it is worth recalling that the word larva, used in English for the early stage of a caterpillar, meant “ghost” or “specter” in… — Marina Warner Copy Share
I am not a great believer in dialectical struggle. I am much more of a fusion person. I see it as a dialogue, or… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school. — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
Love can make you turn on yourself, and it can do harmful things to you. It's a deep lesson in human psychology, as with… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
There is a theory, that I rather subscribe to. The frame story implies that if he doesn't change, she will kill him. It's all very complex and subtle. The story is about a woman who persuades a man in power to a different temper and attitude, and so it is about women's wiles, what women will get up to. She… — Marina Warner Copy Share
Creating simplicity often makes the heart leap; order has been restored, the crooked made straight. But order is understanding that things cannot be made… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
The other thing about the Nights is that it is quite racist. One parentheses is that I think this is one of the negative things that appeal to people, that The Arabian Nights could be used as a disguise for racism. It suited the West. You could smuggle racism into children's literature, you see. The African magician in the story… — Marina Warner Copy Share
The tales are quite hard to remember and I found that going back to it between bouts of writing fiction, I was having to… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
One of the metaphors of the book is the carpet. Not just the flying carpet, but the carpet as a woven surface in which many repetitions and motifs recur and mirror one another. This is very much reflected within the stories: they have borders within borders, repeated motifs which change. They have their feet in oral conventions, and for the… — Marina Warner Copy Share
The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
