Terence McKenna Quotes

I believe in elves and giants. I believe that fairy tales are nothing more than news reports of what once happened.

Every crag and gnarled tree and lonely valley has its own strange and graceful legend attached to it.

In the Land of Ire, the belief in fairies, gnomes, ogres and monsters is all but dead; in the Land of Ind, it still flourishes in all the vigour of animism.

I am quite spiritual. I believed in the fairies when I was a child. I still do sort of believe in the fairies. And the leprechauns. But I don't believe in God.

I love all of mythology and rules pertaining to all of the monsters, but I like to go the extra step.

Actually, I love mythology. When I was a kid I was obsessed with myth and I wanted to be a mythologist when I grew up. Then I realized I really just like stories.

People have always had a fascination with the supernatural going back to the beginning of time and with vampires in particular. This phenomenon is not new.

Vampires were an excellent springboard. I still love them; they fascinate me.

As you study vampire legend throughout history, it goes back to almost every culture. South Africa, Indonesia, crazy places have that legend and that idea of immortality.

When our ancestors crouched about the camp fire at night, they told each other tales of gods and heroes, monsters and marvels, to hold back the terrors of the night. Such tales comforted and entertained, diverted and educated those who listened, and helped shape their sense of the world and their place in it.

Elves are cool, man.

More often than not, however, the person who flatly states 'Elves aren't like that!' is hard pressed to describe how they really look.... as if Tolkien has summoned archetypes from so deep in our minds that we can only recall them incompletely.

Legends are all to do with the past and nothing to do with the present.

Ireland is a country peopled by peasants, priests and pixies.

I was in my mid-teens when someone gave me a copy of 'Pears Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legends' as a birthday present. It sat on my shelves for many months before I looked at it. When I did, I couldn't stop reading it.

People tend to associate fairies with princesses, but they couldn't be more different. Princesses have dynastic and domestic pressures, and they get parked on glass hills. Fairies don't have families. They don't clean or cook. They sip nectar from flowers and dance by the light of the moon.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. Elves are bad.

If the devil went about doing a tenth of what he is accused of doing he would be poor from paying the blacksmith for ox-shoes for his hooves.

Again, if there are really no fairies, why do people believe in them, all over the world? The ancient Greeks believed, so did the old Egyptians, and the Hindoos, and the Red Indians, and is it likely, if there are no fairies, that so many different peoples would have seen and heard them?

So you are a vampire." "I most certainly am not." He looked annoyed. "That's such a common phrase, such a cliche, and so unflattering. I suppose you believe in werewolves and aliens too. I blame television.

Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.

Fairy tales since the beginning of recorded time, and perhaps earlier, have been “a means to conquer the terrors of mankind through metaphor.

Faeries are equally loyal and deceitful.

Just because you saw a vampire doesn't mean that a snowman or a Loch Ness Monster also exists.

No man of sense in the whole world believes in devils any more than he does in mermaids, vampires, gorgons, hydras, naiads, dryads, nymphs, fairies, the Fountain of Youth, [or] the Philosopher's Stone. . . .