Top 35 Kate Forsyth Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “May my heart be kind, my mind fierce, and my spirit brave.”

— Kate Forsyth

2. “War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike. It can drag on for years, a slow attrition of nerve and fortitude, or be over in one brilliant flash, an extravagant conflagration of flame and blood and waste.”

— Kate Forsyth

3. “If you are brave of heart, sharp of wit, strong of spirit and steadfast of purpose, there is nothing you cannot achieve.”

— Kate Forsyth

4. “Stories cannot exist without a storyteller.”

— Kate Forsyth

5. “Fairy tales are not just for children. They are for all humans, having the power to help us change not only ourselves but, indeed, the whole world.”

— Kate Forsyth

6. “The dried yellow petals of St. John’s wort, which Old Marie called ‘chase-devil’ for the way it could drive the megrims away. Gaudy calendula, bright as the sun. Sweet-smelling lemon balm, guaranteed to lift the spirits with its aroma alone.”

— Kate Forsyth

7. “The bare branches were silvered with frost. The berries of the holly tree looked white with rime. Old Marie said that all holly berries had once been white, but that the crown of thorns had been made of holly, and the berries had turned red when touched with Jesus’s blood. She had a story to explain everything, Old Marie.”

— Kate Forsyth

8. “It seemed like a magical city, floating on the lagoon as if conjured by an enchanter’s wand. I sat in the meadow and stared at it, picking meadow flowers from around my feet- clover and daisies and wild garlic- and making myself a wreath.”

— Kate Forsyth

9. “I think fantasy is best described as a kind of fiction that evokes wonder, mystery or magic, a sense of possibility beyond the ordinary world in which we live, and yet which reflects and comments upon that known world.”

— Kate Forsyth

10. “Words. I had always loved them. I collected them, like I had collected pretty stones as a child. I liked to roll words over my tongue like a lump of molten honeycomb, savouring the sweetness, the crackle, the crunch.”

— Kate Forsyth

11. “I’m not brave,′ Ava replied huskily. ‘If you only knew how afraid I really am. Sometimes I think I am afraid of everything.’ ‘But isn’t that what being brave is all about? Being afraid, but doing it anyway?”

— Kate Forsyth

12. “Dortchen was called the wild one because one day, when she was seven years old, she had got lost in the forest. She had wandered off to a far-distant glade where a willow tree trailed its branches in a pool of water. Dortchen crept within the shadowy tent of its branches and found a green palace. She wove herself a crown of willow tendrils and collected pebbles and flowers to be her jewels. At last, worn out, she lay down on a velvet bed of moss and fell asleep.”

— Kate Forsyth

13. “Fairy tales... give us hope that we can somehow be saved, rescued, healed. Transformed in some way for the better. As we travel with the fairy tale protagonist through the dark and dangerous forest, as we suffer with them and triumph with them, we follow them back into the brightness of a world renewed. Fairy tales are an instruction manual for psychological healing.”

— Kate Forsyth

14. “To light a candle is to cast a shadow.”

— Kate Forsyth

15. “Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms – a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat’s eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune.”

— Kate Forsyth

16. “No story was just a story, though. It was a suitcase stuffed with secrets.”

— Kate Forsyth

17. “She felt as if she had strayed into a fairy tale, as full of peril as of wonder, a place where anything could happen.”

— Kate Forsyth

18. “What they do no’ understand, they fear, and they hate what makes them afraid, for they think it is a sign o’ weakness.”

— Kate Forsyth

19. “Stories are important too. Stories help make sense of things. They make you believe you can do things. They help you imagine that things may be different, that if you just have enough courage... or faith... or goodness... you can change things for the better.”

— Kate Forsyth

20. “Margherita stared at the mask. It was painted bright yellow and marked with little copper-colored circles to suggest florets. White petals streaked with gold radiated out in all directions. Long golden eyelashes fringed the eye slits, and the mouth was painted as a big happy smile. ‘La sua bella,’ she whispered, her lisp more pronounced than ever.”

— Kate Forsyth

21. “The garden was the most beautiful place Margherita had ever seen. In spring, it was a sea of delicate blossom. In summer, it was green and fruitful. In autumn, the trees blazed gold and red and orange, as vivid as Margherita’s hair. Even in winter, it was beautiful, with bare branches against the old stone walls and green hedges in curves and curlicues about beds of winter-flowering herbs and flowers.”

— Kate Forsyth

22. “Ava’s father believed that myths and fairy tales – like dreams – opened a window into the unconscious. by listening to the language of dreams and old tales, he said, all humans could learn to understand themselves and the world, better.”

— Kate Forsyth

23. “The whole reason for telling the fairy tales is to awaken the heart. To help people believe that misfortune can be overcome and evil conquered.”

— Kate Forsyth

24. “I have been fascinated with fairy tales ever since I was first given a red leather-bound copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales when I was just seven years old. Of all the stories of beauty and peril and adventure within its pages, it was the story of ‘Rapunzel’ that resonated with me most powerfully.”

— Kate Forsyth

25. “If we want a better world, we must never cease to think about what kind of world we want... and we must not be afraid to do whatever it takes to make the world the way it should be. It is not enough just to talk. We must act!”

— Kate Forsyth

26. “Nothing opens up the mind and the heart like books do, and so they have the power to change the whole world. That’s why the are burning books, Ava. To stop us thinking, and feeling, and imagining...”

— Kate Forsyth

27. “I stood in a clearing among a stand of beech trees, leaves as red as rubies, branches black as jet. It was sunset, and shafts of richly colored sunlight struck through the delicate pillars of the tree trunks, as if through the lancet windows of a cathedral.”

— Kate Forsyth

28. “Autumn into winter was called Shadowfest, and was the night to predict the future and communicate with the dead. Winter into spring was called the Feast of the Wolf, and was a time to celebrate and make love. Spring into summer was called Lady’s Day, and was a time to be handfasted and to dance about the maypole. Summer into autumn was called Cornucopia, when we celebrated the harvest and and enjoyed the fruits of the earth.”

— Kate Forsyth

29. “Had she been broken and healed all awry, like a bone that had not been properly set?”

— Kate Forsyth

30. “These things you know.” Scarlett shook her head in a mock amazement. “Where do you get all this stuff from ” “Books you know the things made from words printed on paper and bound together. Im sure you must have seen one even if you’ve never opened one ” Max said. “Ha ha very funny ” Scarlett said. Hannah found she had remembered how to smile.”

— Kate Forsyth

31. “Farfallina, bella e bianca, vola vola, mai si stanca, gira qua, e gira la- poi si resta sopra un fiore, e poi si resta sopra un fiore... Butterfly, beautiful and white, fly and fly, never get tired, turn here and turn there- she rests upon a flower... and she rests upon a flower.”

— Kate Forsyth

32. “I have always had a deep love of fairytales and fairytale retellings. As well as the power to enchant and entertain, I believe that the old wonder tales can help us work through the deep internal conflicts that beset us all as we grow to adulthood.”

— Kate Forsyth

33. “Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.”

— Kate Forsyth

34. “I wanted to rest my eyes on green meadows. I wanted to sit on green grass under the shade of a green tree. I wanted to eat cool green salads. I longed for arugula tossed with olive oil and parmesan, for asparagus tips dripping with melted butter, for a salad of sweet and bitter green leaves. Most of all, I longed for fish and parsley soup.”

— Kate Forsyth

35. “Margherita’s father always said a person only truly revealed themselves when in disguise.”

— Kate Forsyth

36. “As I grew up, I read and loved many fairy-tale retellings and began to think about writing my own reimagining of ‘Rapunzel.”

— Kate Forsyth

37. “Her papa called her ‘chiacchere’ because he said she chattered away all day, just like a magpie. He had all sorts of funny names for her: ‘fiorellina’, my little flower; ‘abelie’, which meant honeysuckle; and ‘topolina’, my sweet little mouse. Margherita’s mother only called her ‘piccolina’, my little one, or ‘mia cara Margherita,’ my darling daisy.”

— Kate Forsyth