I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said: "Here's the deal, Wade. You're something called a 'human being.' That's a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we're descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you'll learn more about it But trust me, that's really how we all got here. There's proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. "Oh, and by the way ? there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid Deal with it.

"Our world is not safe. It is a toxic swamp populated by predators and parasites. The odds are stacked against us from the moment of conception. We survive only because we fight the elements, hunger, disease, each other. And, although civilization promises us safe harbor, that promise is a fairy tale. Only the storm is real. It comes for each of us. And we cannot win. We can only choose how we will suffer our defeat.

The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.

Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.

When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

I regard the afterlife to be a fairy story for people that are afraid of the dark

There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It's funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don't want a baby? Don't have one. I don't want to get married? I won't. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called 'being in love' usually does not last. If the old fairy-tale ending 'They lived happily ever after' is taken to mean 'They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,' then it says what probably never was nor ever would be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense - love as distinct from 'being in love' - is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be 'in love' with someone else. 'Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. it is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

"You, of all people, deserve a happy ending. Despite everything that happened to you, you aren't bitter. You aren't cold. You've just retreated a little and been shy, and that's okay. If I were a fairy Godmother, I would give you your heart's desire in an istant. And I would wipe away your tears and tell you not to cry.

In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.

Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.

Do we believe that there is equal economic opportunity out there in the real world right now for each and every one of these groups? If we believed in the tooth fairy if we believed in the Easter Bunny we might well believe that.

Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights ' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'

This is a work of fiction. All the characters in it human and otherwise are imaginary excepting only certain of the fairy folk whom it might be unwise to offend by casting doubts on their existence. Or lack thereof.

I like Cinderella I really do. She has a good work ethic. I appreciate a good hard-working gal. And she likes shoes. The fairy tale is all about the shoe at the end and I'm a big shoe girl.

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.

I'd imagine my wedding as a fairy tale... huge beautiful and white.

We may have forgotten how to feel. Nobody is teaching us how to live happily ever after as we've heard in fairy tales.

'Snow White' is an old fairy tale so obviously the idea of vanity and obsession with youth is long-standing. With today's science people have become crazy with trying to move their face around. It's bizarre.

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and in that respect I liked Bible stories because to me they were very gothic.

My relationship with Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm reaches far back into my childhood. I grew up with Grimm's fairy tales. I even saw a theater production of 'Tom Thumb' during Advent at the State Theater in Danzig which my mother took me to see.

Obsessed by a fairy tale we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.

I love all the old classic Disney movies. 'Pinocchio.' There are obviously tons of them that anybody growing up on that stuff takes with them their whole lives and I'm an admirer of a lot of classic animation and fairy tales. I grew up on a book of Grimm's fairy tales that I kind of wore out again and again. That's all stuff that lingers with you.