Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.
T. E. Lawrence

The good historian is like the giant of the fairy tale. He knows that wherever he catches the scent of human flesh, there his quarry lies.
Marc Bloch

The Italian prose tale had begun to exercise that influence as early as Chaucer's time: but circumstances and atmosphere were as yet unfavourable for its growth.
George Saintsbury

The literature of women's lives is a tradition of escapees, women who have lived to tell the tale.
Phyllis Rose

The Long and the Short and the Tall made a great impression on me because it was a very ugly tale about the reality of soldiering at a time when we were being gung-ho about the whole thing of war.
Timothy West

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
Adrienne Rich

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.
Alice Hoffman

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.
Charles Lamb

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.
Michel de Montaigne

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.
Charles de Lint

There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
Ralph Ellison

There's not a wind but whispers of thy name; And not a flow'r that grows beneath the moon, But in its hues and fragrance tells a tale Of thee, my love.
Barry Cornwall

To me, a fairy tale seems to have become reality.
Nelly Sachs

True stories, autobiographical stories, like some novels, begin long ago, before the acts in the account, before the birth of some of the people in the tale.
Harold Brodkey

Trust the tale, not the teller.
David Knopfler

Well the wedding in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury was a fairy tale and there was a huge public impress, investment of goodwill, affection and indeed money in this Institution. It was a huge success at the time.
Anthony Holden

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries.
Martin C. Smith

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
Brian Eno

Who tells a finer tale than any of us. Silence does.
Isak Dinesen

Why should a horror film be just a horror film? To me, The Company of Wolves is a fairy tale; it's got all those elements plus a lot more. And we know that fairy tales aren't innocent any more.
Neil Jordan