Brothers and Beasts Quotes

“I know that human triumph is never fully redemptive.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“Because he gets scared, he becomes human. Because, my grandmother said, love makes you human. And the loss of love is pain, is fear, is sadness. The boy's wife had hurt him. Before he had nothing to lose, and now, of course, he did.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“The father washes his hands of his son, so the boy is forced to set out alone to try and find fear, hoping that by doing so he'll fit in, that finally he'll belong. That maybe once he can shudder, he'll be able to go home. That's a line that always got me, that part about the shudder and going home.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“As a kid, being with her was easy; it was the nearest to heaven I've ever been.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“Plain and simple, I hope, in a fairy tale way: in fairy tales it is often the humble to whom magic is revealed.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“All good fairy tales have meaning to many levels," Bruno Bettleheim observes in The Uses of Enchantment. "Only the child can know which meanings are significance to him at the moment.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales

“I know many writers who say that the memory of reading fairy tales is their first, and sometimes only, memory of rapture. I hope that this unpredictable, intense collection inspires you to read fairy tales-and then to read them again.”
― Kate Bernheimer, Brothers and Beasts: An Anthology of Men on Fairy Tales