Some Kind of Fairy Tale Quotes

“Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“But there are times in life when a door opens and you are offered a glimpse of the light on the water, and you know that if you don't take it, that door slams shut, and maybe forever. Maybe you fool yourself into thinking that you had a choice at all; maybe you were always going to say yes. Maybe refusing was no more a choice than is holding your breath. You were always going to breathe. You were always going to say yes.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“What I mean is this: you meet someone, you think about them. You're already changing because of the way you think about them. You meet them again, you think about them some more, you're changing again. And on it goes. You are changing right now. Before my eyes.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Twenty years is, after all, a long time. We are not the same people we were. Old friends, lovers, even family members: they are strangers who happen to wear a familiar face. We have no right to claim to know anyone after such a distance.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The modern superstition is that we're free of superstition.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The thing is, when everyone is trying to persuade you that a thing you know to be true isn't actually true, you start to believe them: not because it is true but because it's easier. It's just the easy way out.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“He said he preferred to feel the earth sing through his feet, and that shoes stopped you from hearing the song of the earth.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The most extraordinary thing about it all was how simple it was just to carry on. There were meals to be prepared and eaten; dishes to be washed; clothes to be laundered, ironed, and put on and taken off; beds to be slept in and made and unmade. The prosaic needs of day-to-day living blunted all impact of the miraculous; it demanded that the glorious be relegated. And she knew that even if she were able to convince everyone involved that she had witnessed something remarkable, had undergone a transcendental and miraculous experience, reached and returned from another world, it almost seemed like it would not ever, and could not ever, truly matter.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Perhaps living souls had greater phantom powers than the dead.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Some people feed you with love.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“He looked like a once-green leaf that had begun to dry and to reveal the structure of its veins.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Peter was a gentle, red-haired bear of a man. Standing at six-four in his socks, he moved everywhere with a slight and nautical sway, but even though he was broad across the chest there was something centered and reassuring about him, like an old ship's mast cut from a single timber.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Of course, everything depends on who is telling the story. It always does.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“His wife, Genevieve, had her bare feet up on the sofa, exhausted by the responsibility of coordinating the domestic crisis of Christmas in a house with a dreamy husband, four kids, two dogs, a mare in the paddock, a rabbit, and a guinea pig, plus sundry invading mice and rats that kept finding inventive routes into their kitchen. In many ways it was a house weathering a permanent state of siege.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Sometimes in this life you have to understand that we don’t need to know everything.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Some people feed you with love,” Tara said, “and some people love you with food.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“But there are times in life when a door opens and you are offered a glimpse of the light on the water, and you know that if you don’t take it, that door slams shut, and maybe forever. Maybe you fool yourself into thinking that you had a choice at all; maybe you were always going to say yes. Maybe refusing was no more a choice than is holding your breath. You were always going to breathe. You were always going to say yes.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The music--the making of music and the performing of music--produced memories, many good, some bad, some difficult. But he knew for sure that he'd spent too much of that time living not in the present moment of creating or playing music but in the expectation or hope of some reward, some success. He had always been waiting for his life to start when that happened, when the recognition came. It had taken him twenty years to realize how utterly wrongheaded that was.
It was as if the twenty years didn't amount to much, that he hadn't actually been present for so much of his life.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“You can be an aging rock star, but you can’t be an aging wannabe rock star.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The modern superstition is that we’re free of superstition.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Though most love songs are protest songs, when you think about it.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Good, because if you have got a problem with it I can’t see you. Can’t smoke, can’t see. You can’t smoke anywhere these days. That’s why I gave up and organized my practice from home. You can drive a bloody car pell-mell with a high risk of slaughtering a thousand little children a year but you can’t smoke in case they get a whiff of your tobacco. What sort of a country is that?” He”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Fairy tales are about money, marriage and men. They are maps and manuals that are passed down from mothers and grandmothers to help them to survive. MARINA WARNER”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. CHARLES DE LINT”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Not hungry, thanks, Mum.” “Have just a sandwich.” “No, thanks.” “I can make you a nice ham sandwich. Ham and mustard.” “No, really.” “Cheese? There’s some nice cheddar.” “Honestly, no.” “It’s no trouble.” “Oh, for goodness’ sake! Okay! I give in! I’ll have a bloody sandwich!” “You don’t have to have one,” Mary said, “if you don’t want one.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“And there was Tara, again with that shy half-smile and her burgundy lips slightly puckered, that shy kink, an incomplete curlicue at the corner of her mouth; he'd seen it before many times but never noted it, and now it had him mesmerized.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Whenever he was reminded that life was a losing battle to entropy, what with light-bulbs flickering and horseshoes and nails shuffling out of neat order the moment he turned his back, he was also reminded that humor and a cheerful disposition were the only known antidotes.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“Anyway, I’m not one for labels: they change every couple of years like the hemlines on women’s skirts.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale

“The unrealistic nature of these tales (which narrowminded rationalists object to) is an important device, because it makes obvious that the fairy tales’ concern is not useful information about the external world, but the inner process taking place in an individual.”
― Graham Joyce, Some Kind of Fairy Tale