We often know only one version of the story… the version portrayed by the person who wins a war and lives to tell the tale, and the one who loses a war is always remembered as the ‘Antagonist’ making the victor the ‘Protagonist.’
My first marriage was very traditional, in the church, and then we left the church and went to the reception hall. So this time, I’d like to go fairy tale all the way.
If you see the magic in a fairy tale, you can face the future.
There is a child in every man, and that’s why larger-than-life stories which have a fairly tale component will work.
Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons… provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction.
The tale of the actor struggling to make it is oft-told for a reason.
In 2017 I started writing ‘Mahabharat An Epic Tale’ and it took me two years to write it and prepare the production with Rahul Bhuchar of Felicity theatre, and we launched it on the 17th of Nov 2018 and it was a super success.
The first game I actually bought myself with my own money was ‘The Bard’s Tale.’
I say ‘spectacle’ rather than ‘story’ because in the end, it isn’t the intricacies of narrative that draw us to horror films. When it’s there, I’m grateful for the director’s skill at telling an exquisitely nuanced tale filled with psychological insight, but it is the spectacles that I take home with me.
I’ve always said that Miguel Pinero’s story is a quintessential American tale. An immigrant who comes to this country, is immediately marginalized to the lowest economic level and persecuted because of his skin color and, in spite of all the obstacles put in his way, he becomes a huge popular success.
I first saw ‘They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?’ when I was very young. Its transporting qualities were so strong that I felt like I had lived it. Only recently, with adult eyes, was I able to metabolize how tragic a tale it really is.
My story is similar to every ordinary Indian boy’s tale. My father wanted me to become an engineer or a professional but I was sure that I have to be in the Hindi film industry. I joined college through the quota for extra curricular activities but I am still not a graduate.
When I told my mom I was auditioning for ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ she lost it. She was so excited.
The person most qualified to tell the tale of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the man himself, as gifted an intellect as he is an athlete.
I always wanted to tell the story of how Pearl Jam is the story of lightning striking twice. As well as being the flipside of the classic rock tale where great promise ends in tragedy. This is where tragedy begins great promise.
The real story of Netflix is complicated: an epic tale full of struggle, disappointment, drama, humor, and achievement.
I think ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ always had that power since it was written over 30 years ago. This extraordinary piece of feminist literature had its fan base then, but TV has given it an enormous reach.
You have this fairy tale of ‘life on your own.’ It’s so awesome. Until the apartment floods, or something happens, and your go-to people aren’t there.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a human story, and women’s rights are human rights, and it’s all about equality, but at the end of the day, it’s not equal.
Maybe my fairy tale has a different ending than I dreamed it would. But that’s OK.
It has been a fairy tale for an outsider, bouncing from one film set to another, choosing my films as assertively as those films chose me. And through this journey I have not once faced the dreaded syndrome of the ‘casting couch.’
The special skills necessary for being a storyteller are really very simple. I actually talked about them in a book of mine called ‘Tell Me a Tale.’ Those basic skills are to listen, to observe, to remember, and to share.
Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes.
My first job was when I was eight. I did this opera, which was a Robert Wilson/Philip Glass opera, called ‘White Raven.’ That was a very confusing and trippy creation tale, and I was a kid who brought up the sun and rotated the earth. It was very empowering.
Putin’s treatment of Chechnya became a cautionary tale of what would happen to rebels and terrorists – and indeed to entire groups of people – if they threatened the Russian state.
I’ve had a fairy tale life. I had a perfect family, a beautiful childhood, an incredible upbringing. I lived a lot of life but a lot of good life.
Some of the evil of my tale may have been inherent in our circumstances. For years we lived anyhow with one another in the naked desert, under the indifferent heaven.
Innocent parents might have thought that a musical cartoon version of a fairy tale would be a child’s ideal introduction to movie magic. Yet Walt Disney taught moral lessons in the most useful way: by scaring the poop out of the little ones.
Things aren’t always the fairy tale that you thought they were.
As a little girl living in the English countryside, I used to go running around in the forests, creating my own fairy tale.
With no guillotine, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ would have been a travel guide.
‘Thirteen Orphans’ is the name of a specific limit hand. The same combination is also called ‘Thirteen Improbable.’ Once I’d decided I wanted to write a tale where mah-jong would be at the heart, I also knew I wanted to use limit hands.
I didn’t realize how limiting an R rating is. I made ‘Disco’ as a cautionary tale for 14- and 15-year-old girls, and those girls were not allowed to see the film by their parents.
I didn’t intend ‘Hector’ to be a self-help book when I first started writing. I wrote it as a little tale about a psychiatrist, like me, who sets off around the world in order to discover the vital ingredients for happiness.
I like Cinderella, I really do. She has a good work ethic. I appreciate a good, hard-working gal. And she likes shoes. The fairy tale is all about the shoe at the end, and I’m a big shoe girl.
This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
‘Sag Harbor’ brought me a new readership – it’s a coming of age tale about growing up in the ’80s.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
A survival tale peels away the niceties and comforts of civilization. Suddenly, all the technology and education in the world means nothing. I think all of us wonder while reading a survival tale, ‘What would I have done in this situation? Would I have made it?’
It’s a beautiful tale, and today is a beautiful day without any bugs.
‘1984’ is not a wonder tale. Not only could it happen, but it has happened, but under different names.
One of the major dangers of being alone in February is the tendency to dwell on past relationships. Whether you’re daydreaming about that ‘one that got away,’ or you’re recalling the fairy tale date you went on last Valentine’s Day, romanticizing the past isn’t helpful – nor accurate.
There’s no dancing on the grave of the AAF. We watched them, we’re going to take lessons from them. To a certain degree, it’s a cautionary tale.
‘Frankenstein’ feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms.
Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
And I thought, when I have kids, that’s the sort of well told, silly, and fun fairy tale that I would want to take them to. But it was an amazing experience. And I think Shrek is a real classic, a fairy tale classic.
I always believed ‘The Fly’ to be a classic opera story. It’s a tale of love and death, true love surviving in the face of physical decay and ultimate sacrifice.
The truth is, my folk-lore friends and my Saturday Reviewer differ with me on the important problem of the origin of folk-tales. They think that a tale probably originated where it was found.
There must be possible a fiction which, leaving sociology and case histories to the scientists, can arrive at the truth about the human condition, here and now, with all the bright magic of the fairy tale.
‘The Mahabharata,’ which inspired my novel ‘Palace of Illusions,’ also has many stories embedded within the main tale.
Maybe it’s a tired tale, but without an education, you’re not going to go anywhere.
When I was a little girl, I thought I was Sydney Carton in Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities.’ I don’t think anyone else did.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ is a straightforward, clear story, while ‘The Winter’s Tale,’ as a general rule, is hard to present because there is so much plot.
None of the atrocities in ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ are pure fiction. Everything Margaret wrote was something that has happened somewhere in the world to human beings.
We all love a bit of ‘true love conquers all,’ and when I started on ‘Poison,’ ‘Charm’ and ‘Beauty,’ that was one rule of the fairy tale formula that I didn’t want to break.
