Scheherazade, of course, was always in the back of my mind, because she's also a storyteller identified as female who tells a lot of anti-female stories. There's a parade in The Arabian Nights of sorceresses, adulteresses, ghouls, sirens, harridans. — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
An interesting example is that the worst woman in the book, who is so cruel and violent, is the sorceress in "The Prince of the Black Islands." She's a beautiful young woman, and she has turned her husband into stone… — 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… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
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… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
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… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
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… — Marina Warner Copy Share Image
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
