64 Quotes by Terri Windling

The simple truth is that being a creative artist takes courage; it’s not a job for the faint of heart. It takes courage each and every time you put a book or poem or painting before the public, because it is, in fact, enormously revealing.

Happiness is a talent like any other. It's another art form. Some people are good at it, some people aren't.

We’re all misfits herefrom our weirdnesses and our differences, from our manic fixations, our obsessions, our passions. From all those wild and wacky things that make each of us unique.

We’ve always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It’s no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

There’s that old adage about how there’s only seven plots in the world and Shakespeare’s done them all before.

Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality – for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.

Magic Realism is not new. The label’s new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it’s been around as long as literature has been around.

In more recent years, I’ve become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

Trickster foxes appear in old stories gathered from countries and cultures all over the world – including Aesop’s Fables from ancient Greece, the “Reynard” stories of medieval Europe, the “Giovannuzza” tales of Italy, the “Brer Fox” lore of the American South, and stories from diverse Native American traditions.