Jorge Luis Borges Quotes

I don't feel there's a difference between the real world and the fairy-tale world. They contain psychological truths and, I guess, projections of what the culture that tells them thinks about various things: men, women, aging, dying - the most basic aspects of being human.

I'm only interested in science fiction that's used as a literary device, a shortcut into something more exploratory or universal about our experience. That's why I think it was invented and why mythology was invented; it's a tool, not an end to itself.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Real stories - whether in pure fiction or historical - have a certain indefinable power; we are endlessly curious about the past and hungry for learning that we hope will illuminate the present.

Jesus had a tough life. I read about that guy. Jesus is the only guy that ever came back from the dead that didn't scare the F- out of everybody!

Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice.

Human beings have always told their histories and truths through parable and fable. We are inveterate storytellers.

Obi-Wan understands that the best thing he can do is contribute something positive to the world around him and then to leave. And if he does that, he will in some ways live forever because the good influence of what he did will be felt. It may sound corny but that's kind of the way I feel about contributing to Star Wars characters. It isn't about me. It's about the story. It's about the mythology of Star Wars and the moral implications of that mythology.

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.

So shall we join the disciples of our Lord, keeping faith in Him in spite of the crucifixion, and making ready, by our loyalty to Him in the days of His darkness, for the time when we shall enter into His triumph in the days of His light.

We need storytelling. Otherwise life just goes on and on, like the number Pi.

The Son of God, prompted by the same infinite love, laid aside his divine glory and mode of existence, emptied himself exchanged the form of God for the form of a servant, humbled himself and became obedient, even unto the death of the cross.

Literature is the history of the soul.

There cannot be any 'story' without a fall - all stories are ultimately about the fall - at least not for human minds as we know them and have them.

Love was compressed for all history in that lonely figure on the cross, who said that he could call down angels at any moment on a rescue mission, but chose not to - because of us. At Calvary, God accepted his own unbreakable terms of justice.

Some truths are expressed best in the form of myth.

The greatest art in the world is the art of storytelling.

. . . an absurd problem came to the surface: 'How COULD God permit that (crucifixion of Jesus Christ)!' . . . the deranged reason of the little community found quite a frightfully absurd answer: God gave his Son for forgiveness, as a SACRIFICE . . . The SACRIFICE FOR GUILT, and just in its most repugnant and barbarous form - the sacrifice of the innocent for the sins of the guilty! What horrifying heathenism!

The object of pilgrimage is not rest and recreation – to get away from it all. To set out on a pilgrimage is to throw down a challenge to everyday life.

This earth that we live on is full of stories in the same way that, for a fish, the ocean is full of ocean. Some people say when we are born we're born into stories. I say we're also born from stories.

Christianity is a faith in which God sent his Son to die for you.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

I adored history, not the dry dates and boring battles, but the stories and the people who populated them.

One of my heroes, G.K. Chesterton, said, "The old fairy tales endure forever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal." Discovering that the modern world can still contain the wonder and strangeness of a fairy tale is part of what my novels are about.

A myth is a lie that conveys a truth.