tales

"The wish is the first truth about us, since it represents not that learned principle of reality which half-governs our workaday hours, but the primary principle of pleasure which governs infancy, sleep, daydreams--and certainly, many stories. Reading stories, we cannot help remembering Groddeck's 'We have to reckon with what exists, and dreams, daydreams too, are also facts; if anyone really wants to investigate realities, he cannot do better than to start with such as these. If he neglects them, he will learn little or nothing of the world of life.' If wishes were stories, beggars would read; if stories were true, our saviors would speak to us in parables. ... "

-Randall Jarrell, On the Truth in Fairy Tales