Feywine for the Mythic Soul

quotes of myth and majik

Some things have to be believed to be seen.
--Ralph Hodgson

Feel the song at Creation's heart, ten thousand voices trilling in tohe night? Do you hear the scamper of enigmas fleeing past your window? And do the howls of the goblin market rouse hidden places in your heart?
Of course.
You're one of us.
--Phil Brucato and The Silver Circle, Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium, Introduction

With one foot in the mortal world and the other in Faerie, we tread the roads where the four winds meet. Art is our gospel, mystery our temple. We're the twilight people, the wayfarers, watchers at the threshold and keepers of enchantment.
--ibid.

His hoofbeats crackle in the corridors of twilight. If you listen, you might hear him outside your window, trotting on endless errands between our world and the next. And if you hurry, you might catch up with him, join his journey on the crossway paths. Who knows? Stranger things have happened.
Once upon a time, it's said, life was marvelous. But those days, supposedly, are gone, cast down by cold realities.
But that isn't true.
There's magic still.
The Stag is running, and his hoofbeats herald change.
Join his flight. Close your eyes.
Run with him, and see that "once upon a time" is now.
-- Phil Brucato and The Silver Circle, Deliria: Faerie Tales for a New Millennium, Ch. 1

"It is no secret. All power is one in source and end, I think. Years and distances, stars and candles, water and wind and wizardry, the craft in a man's hand and the wisdom in a tree's root: they all arise together. My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name."
--?, Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.
--Neil Gaiman

"You know why trees smell the way they do?" ... "Stars. Trees breathe in starlight year after year, and it goes deep into their bones. So when you cut a tree open, you smell a hundred years' worth of light. Ancient starlight that took millions of years to reach earth. That's why trees smell so beautiful and old."
--Murphy in Frances O'Roark Dowell, Where I'd Like to Be

The trick to magic is that it lies in between. In between what? It almost doesn't matter. It just has to be in between. Not blue or yellow, but green. Not sun or moon, but the light of dusk. Not river or land, but the bridge that spans the water. ... A place between, you see. You can find them anywhere.
--Charles de Lint, Tapping the Dream Tree

Selkie women are the women you don't understand. They are the women who know that they belong to another tribe, in another element. And so they seem as though they don't belong in yours -- and they don't. They are the women who live by other rules and values, because their rules and values are different from those of this world. They are the women who sometimes seem to be listening to other voices, or music you can't hear, or the call of distant bells. There is a faraway look in their eyes.
Selkie women are the ones who look as though they came out of fairy tales, because they did. The ones who look at the sea longingly, who look at the sky as their home. They do not fear death. They only fear imprisonment. Selkie women are the ones you can't keep.
--Theodora Goss

I do believe in faeries and I also know I really used to be one. And at some point, which is what happens once you're locked up... at some point you're essentially going to lose your wings. Maybe at some point I'll get them back. I hope that I do. But I realize that I am ridiculous and I realize that having to go around life in faerie wings just to feel like I can live in this world... that I usually don't feel terribly comfortable with.. That is what it took for me for a long time... and I loved that. There is nothing really wrong with that... but to be honest, I know that I have to deal with mortality and being able to be hurt and all of those things... and what faerie wings represented to me was, and it sounds so much deeper than I think it looked like to anybody at the time, is that I'm on a different plane and you touch me... and that's what my protection really was.
--Emilie Autumn, The Opheliac Companion, about the song "Swallow" (on Opheliac)

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn't realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don't recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.
After you go so far away from it, though, you can't really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it's because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they're left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.
That's what I believe.
--Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

A question like "How big is Faerie?" does not admit of a simple answer. Faerie, after all, is not one land, one principality or dominion. Maps of Faerie are unreliable, and may not be depended upon. We talk of the kings and queens of Faerie as we would speak of the kings and queens of England, as it is bigger than the world (for, since the dawn of time, each land that has been forced off the map by explorers and the brave going out and proving it wasn't there has taken refuge in Faerie; so it is now, by the time that we come to write of it, a most huge place indeed, containing every manner of landscape and terrain). Here, truly, there be Dragons. Also gryphons, wyverns, hippogriffs, basilisks, and hydras. There are all manner of more familiar animals as well, cats affectionate and aloof, dogs noble and cowardly, wolves and foxes, eagles and bears.
--Neil Gaiman, Stardust

Free from every earthen tide, past stars and planets you must ride, until you reach the farther side.
--The Castle of Dr. Brain

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
--Edgar Allan Poe

We do not seek to convert anyone... only the Elven have any interest in being Elves. Yet in many, their elfin natures slumber and for these we sing the songs of awakening -- Whether there ever were Elves is not as important to us as the fact that by manifestation, will, and burning desire, we are here now.
--The Silver Elves

For all the hillside was haunted
By the faery folk come again
And down in the heart-light enchanted
Were opal-coloured men
--A.E. (George Russell)

If you want magic, let go of your armor. Magic is so much stronger than steel.
--Richard Bach

The only life worth living is the magical one.
--Richard Bach

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
--Henry David Thoreau

Faerie music is the wind... and their movement is the play of shadow cast by moonlight, or starlight, or no light at all. Faerie lives like a ghost beside us, but only the city remembers. But then the city never forgets anything.
--Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot, "Ghosts of Wind and Shadow"

The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people's expectations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be. They are still here, walking among us. We just don't recognize them anymore.
--Charles de Lint, Dreams Underfoot, "Ghosts of Wind and Shadow"

Why only dream of the home we had once? Are there not worthy places to lie [sic] our heads here? We must not only work the magick of the gates, not only begin the awakening in others. We must make our abodes "home", make them feel as magickal as we are in spirit. In doing this, we have made this world so much the better, and we will have prepared ourselves for what we most cherish - home.
--Rialian Ashtae

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
--Tom Robbins

I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.
--Henry Emerson Fosdick

So did I feel one warm summer day lying idly on the hillside, not then thinking of anything but the sunlight, and how sweet it was to drowse there, when, suddenly, I felt a fiery heart throb, and knew it was personal and intimate, and started with every sense dilated and intent, and turned inwards, and I heard first a music as of bells going away, away into that wondrous underland whither, as legend relates, the Danaan gods withdrew; and then the heart of the hills was opened to me, and I knew there was no hill for those who were there, and they were unconscious of the ponderous mountain piled above the palaces of light, and the winds were sparkling and diamond clear, yet full of colour as an opal, as they glittered through the valley, and I knew the Golden Age was all about me, and it was we who had been blind to it but that it had never passed away from the world.
--A.E. (George Russell), The Candle of Vision, "Retrospect"

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
--Eden Philpotts

I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic.
--Toby Weye in Charles de Lint, Yarrow

Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always.
--Willa Cather

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen both when we sleep and when we wake.
--John Milton

Conjuring things that have never been and walking among them, touching, feeling, and responding: Imagining allows you to fancifully sail into the future to explore and to bring back the gems – the thoughts, feelings, ideas, and concepts - that are waiting there, that are waiting there just for you. Remember: Always imagine. Always imagine, and always cherish your ability to do so.
--Lazaris

Obscured in adaptation and cynicism, bound by incredulity, magic was once lost in silence. Magic is awakening. You can hear its call.
--Lazaris

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream. Not only plan, but also believe.
--Anatole France

The worlds of magic and logic must exist side by side, not destroy each other.
--The Flight of Dragons

Much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.
--Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Ring Goes South"

Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings indeed!
--Puck in Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

[Magic is] simply a word humans use for arts they don't understand. Magic is the software system which operates reality. Sometimes it's formed by rudimentary technology; sometimes it's inherent. It's all the same thing. People tell each other that magic doesn't exist, and that there's only science; but really they're two words for the same thing.
--The Eighth Doctor, Autumn Mist (novel)

The magic is always there, as long as we keep looking for it.
--Uncle Traveling Matt, Fraggle Rock

Faerie is not there, but here; it is not then, but now.
--A.E. Waite

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
--Shakespeare

It is not Elfland that creates the elves - it is we Elves who create Elfland!
--The Silver Elves

Blending living night and deep dream ... is the way with Elves.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, "The Riders of Rohan"

Fea Elentáro nai elwenna caluva
(Quenya: "May the Spirit of the Queen of the Stars shine down upon us")
eR`C `VjR4~C7Y 5lE `VjnR5"# aEjUyE
("eR`C -- Say what??" you may be thinking. Tengwar font mapping is peculiar, to say the least. That is the Latin-character text that produces the Tengwar above if you render it with a proper Tengwar font. Tecendil can do this online for you starting from the Romanized text "Fea Elentáro..." without messing around with the screwy mapping, although if you want to see it, just copy the Tengwar it outputs and paste it into something like a plain text file.)

Elen sila lumenn' [lumenna] omentielvo
(Quenya: "A star shines on the hour of our meeting")
`VjR5 iTjE jUt$5 `Nt$4%`VjyY

Êl síla erin lû e-govaned vîn
(Sindarin: "A star shines on the hour of our meeting")
lFj 8`Vj] l7`6 j.F lshr]6l2 r`V6

Aiya Earendil elenion ancalima
(Quenya: "Hail, Earendil, brightest of stars")
lEhÍE `V`C7R2%j `VjR5%`N5 `Cf#jTt#

The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot be assuaged.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, "The Mirror of Galadriel"

Melmelma nóren sina núra lá earo núri
(Quenya: "Our love for this land is deeper than the deeps of the sea", based on the above quote)
t$jt$jt# 5~N7R5 iT5# 5~M7E j~C `V`C7Y 5~M7

I like fairy tales, and I like dreaming. I try to weave the reality into the dream.
--Grace Coddington

Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, ch. 3 "A Short Rest"

Faeries are not fantasy, but a connection to reality. Faeries are irrational, poetic, absurd, and very, very wise. Faeries say there is nonsense in dogma, and sense in nonsense. Faeries express themselves with high seriousness and low humour. Faeries are resistant to all definitions.
--Brian Froud

Memory, prophecy, and fantasy - past, future, and the dreaming moment between - are all one country, living one immortal day. To know that is Wisdom. To use it is the Art.
--Clive Barker, The Great and Secret Show

I want to torture the people who don't understand the world of faeries. You'll get some reporter from Vogue who doesn't know what she's talking about, who paints me as some insipid Tinkerbell character. I'm not some shivering waif in the forest. Sometimes I want to grab those bitches by the hair and take them to the world of faerie and say, "would you like to repeat that?" I think that people who can't believe in faeries aren't worth knowing.
--Tori Amos

But you do, you have magic. Maybe you can't find it, but it's there! You have all the power you need, if you dare to look for it.
--Molly Grue in Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however.
--Lazaris

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night, in the dusty recesses of their minds awake in the day to find that all was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes and make it happen.
--T. E. Lawrence

Humans think they know what reality is, what life's about. They think they know because they think. "I think, therefore I know." Their attitude is "I'm at the top of the food chain, so I get to decide what's real and what's not." What they don't want to be, simply doesn't exist. Except, perhaps, in their dreams. Or nightmares. So they end up watching the shadows on the wall of the cave, thinking that's how the world really is. They never look at the things throwing the shadows...
--Nancy Collins, In the Blood

Don't you know that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence; and that you are not to believe one word of it, even if it is true?
--Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies

Between the worlds
of men and gods
there go I.
And it's neither Blasphemy
nor escapism.
It's REALITY, man!
--Susan Sigl

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power's the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
--John F. Kennedy (really?)

Wisdom is the knowledge of the laws of the universe, which are greater than each of us alone. And magic is the courage to call upon them.
--Janet/Stewart Farrar?

There is something inside all of us that yearns not for reason but for mystery... not for penetrating clear thought but for the whisperings of the irrational... not for science but for wizardry disguised as science... not for rationally founded influence but for magic.
--Karl Jaspers

I raise this rallying cry for all fellow non-humans around the world. It is time those of elven, dwarven, and others stopped passively letting out heritage slip away in to the mists of time. It is now, the end of helplessness. We must not allow our gifts to atrophy further. We shall bring back true magic; break down the dam that allows only a small trickle of the magical into dominant, mundane reality. It is the duty of all those who have achieve enlightenment to help those not as far along the path. It is the imperative of all those who achieved a personal magical reality to implant those ideas into consensual reality. We will use force if necessary, through teaching otherwise. The Veil to the Otherworld has thickened over the years. It is our duty as beings who are still able to perceive and manipulate the veil, due to our non-human heritage, to rend it to the point where magic is as free flowing as the oxygen we breathe and as commonplace as technology. This will allow our oldest brethren, The True Fae, and other magical creatures to once again live among us in acceptance. We must help those who are caught on this side of the Veil suffering torment from the lack of magical energies. We must provide a basic magickal litteracy for the world.
--Morningstar, "Elven Nation Manifesto" (errors sic)

I am not the only one who is really not human. There are other Fey out there, and I know some of them. There are others out there who are not elves, but are not of this world, either. Stuffed into human bodies as well, there are dragons and were-creatures and beings I cannot define. We are here for a reason, and that reason is to keep the magic alive that so many people on this planet have forgotten to see. A time will come when we will need it.
--Wynde/nai, "On Being an Elf in a Human's World"

Sit down and listen to a beautiful, wonderful, rich piece of music... don't just hear the tones, but listen - not only with your ears, but with your spirit and with your heart... let the music move through you... become one with you. Then you may get a feeling of what it is like for Fae to communicate.
--unknown

The realms that Elves walk in are areas of twilight. They are areas that are neither one spot or another, but are the areas of interaction between.
--Rialian Ashtae

The essence of our magical elfin realm is not something we can create by building palaces nor forest sanctuaries. The true Faerie abides within us. It is not out there, but in here, and to find it we must reach into our very souls and become those magical beings we know ours'elves to truly be. Elfland is born from the inside out; it is brought to life by our own radiant being. Elfland is built not by wood nor concrete but by light and shadow woven together by our love.
--The Silver Elves

We exist in more than just dreams and fables. We dwell in the sky, the earth, the oceans. We frolic in meadows and forests alike. Our forms are oft hidden from your eyes, though never from your hearts!
--unknown

The world is full of zanies and fools
who don't believe in sensible rules,
and won't believe what sensible people say;
and because these daft and dewy-eyed dopes
keep building up impossible hopes,
impossible things are happening every day.
--Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cinderella, "Impossible/It's Possible"

The faery beam upon you,
The stars to glister on you,
A moon of light
In the noon of night
Till the firedrake hath o'er gone you.
--Ben Jonson, The G***ies Metamorphosed

Enchantment they craft, faerie glamour abounds
Your mind's true fancies... reality found!
Awaken now... Shhhh, not a sound,
For in this moment you may chance to perceive
Reality as t'was meant to be.
--Mark Turner?

We of Faerie are of the wild magic. We are not creatures of spells and grimoires. We are spells, and we are written of in grimoires.
--Neil Gaiman, Sandman #52, "Cluracan's Tale"

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.
--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The crazy landscapes behind the faces,
Holding back the forbidden places
Abolished music, lost for ages
The living words of forbidden pages
Though dust has gathered on honest feeling
Forbidden truths through twilight stealing
And in the eyes of the listless faces
Glisten hints of forbidden places
--Meat Puppets, "Forbidden Places"

As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.
--Charles de Lint

If you don't believe in dragons,
it is curiously true
That the dragons you disparage
Choose to not believe in you.
--Jack Prelutsky, The Dragons are Singing Tonight

No breath of fire, no control of worlds,
no fear under wing, nor virgin girls.
Heart of steel, soul of wind,
a spirit soaring, a Dragon kin.
--unknown

...there's a world beyond what we can see and touch, and that world lives by its own laws. What may be impossible in this very ordinary world is very possible there, and sometimes the boundaries between the two worlds disappear, and then who can say what is possible and impossible?
--David Eddings

In the midnight forest the dark oak trees are still under the stars. The pale wildflowers in the clearing have furled their petals for the night. Suddenly he appears, a milk-white creature with the proud form of a horse. You may not notice his cloven hoofs or curling beard, but you see the curved neck, the silver mane, the graceful tail. Then he moves his head, and the moonlight runs like sea water along the pearly spiral of his horn. There is no sound, but at the next heart-beat the clearing is once again empty of all but the night.
--Georgess McHargu, "The Beasts of Never"

The faery realm is the Primal Land: wherever you are, whatever land you are in, the faery realm is the primal image of that land. It is before and beyond corruption and pollution, hence its legendary names: the Ever Young, the Land of Heart's Desire.
--R.J. Stewart, Earth Light

Why bother with faeryland when we can have soap operas? The sacred land is irrelevant in a pop-video consumer culture. So the worlds move farther apart, and our planet suffers just as our souls suffer.
--R. J. Stewart, Earth Light

Far beyond the world of the cold mind and the stony heart, yet closer than the breath in a frosty dawn is Hy Brasil, the Many-Coloured Land of Heart's Desire!
--Olivia Robertson, "Pisces and Cerridwen" ritual

"Halflings! But they are only a little people in old songs and children's tales out of the North. Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?"
"A man may do both," said Aragorn. "For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!"
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers, Bk. 3 Ch. 2 "The Riders of Rohan"

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. 1 Ch. 3 "Three is Company"

"For the Elves the world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by: it is a grief to them. Slow, because they do not count the running years, not for themselves. The passing seasons are but ripples ever repeated in the long long stream."
--Aragorn in J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. 2 Ch. 9 "The Great River"

Now come the riders, the tall and shining Sidhe folk, the oldest and the brightest, like earth-locked angels. Look upon them all in their finery, silk and gossamer, and see how they leave trails of rainbows as they ride.
--John Adcox, Blackthorne Faire

There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is, how far is it from midtown and how late is it open?
--Woody Allen

Voices in the forest tell of dark and twisted enchantments - as dark and twisted as the roots and grasping branches of the trees themselves.
--Brian Froud

Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.
--J. R. R. Tolkien

Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair and let us huddle together as darkness takes over. We are at home amidst the birds and the trees, for we are children of nature.
--Susan Polis Shutz

Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.
--Nora Roberts

"No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith."
--Drizzt Do'Urden in R. A. Salvatore, Streams of Silver

I believe in everything until it's disproved. So I believe in fairies, myths, dragons. it all exists, even if it's in your mind. Who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as the here and now?
--John Lennon

Faerie is a world of dark enchantments, of captivating beauty, of enormous ugliness, of callous superficiality, of humour, mischief, joy and inspiration, of terror, laughter, love and tragedy. It is far richer than fiction would generally lead one to believe and, beyond that, it is a world to enter with extreme caution, for of all things faeries resent the most it is curious humans blundering about their private domains like so many ill-mannered tourists. So go softly -- where the rewards are enchanting, the dangers are real.
--Betty Ballantine

Things there are in the world which have never loved Men, which have been in the world far longer than humankind, so that once when Men were newer on the earth and the woods were greater, there had been places a Man might walk where he might feel the age of the world on his shoulders. Forests grew in which the stillness was so great he could hear stirrings of a life no part of his own. There were brooks from which the magic had not gone, mountains which sang with voices, and sometimes a wind touched the back of his neck and lifted the hairs with the shiver of a presence at which a Man must never turn and stare.
--C. J. Cherryh, The Dreamstone

I've come back to reality. Which is the world of the imagination. That's the true world, Monsieur. Why did I ever allow myself to forget? You have to conjure it, that's all. Sometimes you can completely forget it's there. You get ground down in the minutiae of daily life, the details. And then it's as though a door swings open, a door concealed in the wall, and you walk through, and you're in that other place.
--Michèle Roberts

There is some Fey spirit that comes to possess me, now and again, bringing on a pricking in the heels to dance on dew soaked lawns and to worship the stars and to walk on the watered silk of the lake as if it were a silvered road to the Moon. I find myself seeking in the faces of others some remnant of my pale sisters that we might braid ivy in our hair againstdrunkennessand laugh like Maenads at the steel and tarmac, knowing well how short their reign. When the thunder clouds curl about the city and my veins run green with foxfire and the human world dissolves about me in shreds of torn plastic, thien, I know that which we fear, death and the wild things, are one and the same and no matter how fast we run the Wild Hunt is quicker still and one day we shall ride with them and at last be free.
--Skye

I crave a world of gorgeous and gigantic mystery, splendour, and terror, in which reigns no limitation save that of the untrammelled imagination.
--H. P. Lovecraft

"Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth," he said, "and there my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!"
--Aragorn in J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. 2 Ch. 6 "Lothlórien"

After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of "truth", and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

The magic cannot be separated from the land. You can put the knowledge in a book, perhaps, but that does not preserve it; once everything is gone but the dry pages, they only point to what is lost. Magic is alive, as the mountains are alive, as we are alive.
--Sara Amis, "Poison in the Heart of the World", No Unsacred Place 1/17/2014

There is another world, but it is in this one.
--possibly William Butler Yeats, but see this discussion about the attribution

He hears the wild Green Harper
Chant sweet a fairy rune,
And through the sleeping-silence
His feet must track the tune
When the world is barred and speckled
With silver of the moon.
--Ethna Carbery, "The Curse of Mora"

Above us, only stars. Below us, only stars. To all sides, only stars. Inside us, only stars.
--Welcome to Night Vale

You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.
--?? in Neil Gaiman, Stardust

...at its heart all magic stems from the same source, which is to say The Magic, the infinite potentiality that is, was and ever will be, from which all things are created. ...there is a vibrational transference of energy ... that is shared among the elfin that cannot be learned from books or received from others. ...the best way to learn elfin magic is to be with other elves...
--The Silver Elves, "Finding our own magic"

Faerie/Elfin is not so much another place but another vibration of this world. Think of it as one would think of Ultra Violet or Infra Red, a spectrum of being that exists here and now but is not readily observable by most folks.
--The Silver Elves, "Faerie at First Sight"

We are elves not because our bodies are descended from elves, although we may well be descended from those tribes, such as the Scythians, the Pict-Sidhe or the Tuatha Da Danaan, upon which the tales of elves are mostly based; but because we choose to be elves; although, it is a basic truth that we choose to be elves because we are elves. In the long run of evolution, we all choose to be who are truly are. We cannot help but do so.
--The Silver Elves, The Elven Way

Yet in the blood of man there is a tide, an old sea-current, rather, that is somehow akin to the twilight, which brings him rumours of beauty from however far away, as drift-wood is found at sea from islands not yet discovered; and this spring-tide or current that visits the blood of man comes from the fabulous quarter of his lineage, from the legendary, of old; it takes him out to the woodlands, out to the hills; he listens to ancient song.
--Lord Dunsany, "The Bride of the Man-Horse"

The winds that awakened the stars
Are blowing through my blood.
--W. B. Yeats, "Maid Quiet"

[T]he first men to talk of "trees" and "stars" saw things very differently. To them, the world was alive with mythological beings. They saw the stars as living silver, bursting into flame in answer to the eternal music. They saw the sky as a jeweled tent, and the earth as the womb whence all living things have come. To them, the whole of creation was "myth-woven and elf patterned."
--J. R. R. Tolkien, quoted by Humphrey Carpenter in The Inklings

Magic is not so much something which you do occasionally behind closed doors or in the space behind your closed eyes, but a way of living your life – a way of approaching the world you move through and everything in it.
--Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos

To me, past lives are not past but still affect me now. There is no past -- time is not linear. I was not an elf, I am an elf. I do not remember my elven language, I speak it every day.
--Ambrosia

Some people think we elves are fallen angels but we know we descended into this world on purpose.
--The Silver Elves, Living the Personal Myth

Some people say we elves are creatures of myth, and we agree. We elves are indeed mythic beings, which ordinary mortals do well to remember.
--The Silver Elves, Living the Personal Myth

...the primal desire at the heart of Faerie [is] the realization, independent of the conceiving mind, of imagined wonder.
--J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories"

Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality.
--Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Who plays the Song of Songs upon the Hills of Dream?
--Fiona Macleod, Poems and Dramas of Fiona Macleod

There is music in your soul. A wild and untamed sort of music that speaks to me. It defies all the rules and laws you humans set upon it. It grows from inside you, and I have a wish to set that music free.
--S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong

The lights grew brighter. There were people among the deep green of the trees. They reached out, beckoning as we rode by, and I realized: what stood in the forest, what cried out and called as we passed, was beautiful, was strange, was not human.
--Kat Howard, Roses and Rot

I remember walking through the woods, the very midnight air bending to my will. Stars crowned my hair and I wore a mantle of secrets that gave me power. I miss the feeling of my wings, I miss the presence of magic on my skin.
--unseelie-sorceress

Concobar: Can dreams have a voice?
Duach: They alone speak. It is our spoken words that are the idle dreams.
--Fiona Macleod, The House of Usna

The fae breathed magic. They were magic. To separate a faerie from magic was to cleave them from life.
--India Drummond, Blood Faerie

...ancient Elves with minds full of stars, walking through memory and singing songs of days long past.
--bunn, "The House of Feanor: Little Pity", Ch. 2

People call us romantics, mystics, dreamers, hippies, aliens, but we call ourselves elves. And we are.
--Nikolay Lyapanenko, The Elves from Ancient Times to Our Days

We are not here to reclaim a Faerie that once was, but to participate in a Faerie that ever is.
--The Silver Elves

And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
--Roald Dahl, The Minpins

The wood so softly singing
In a language strange to hear
And the song it sings will find you
As the twilight draws you near
--Heron Mist, "Enchantment"

In truth we do not go to Faery, we become Faery...
--James Stephens, "The Carl of the Drab Coat", Irish Fairy Tales

They say the Hidden Path can't be found. Because it's hidden. But that is not quite true. It is only hidden from those who can't see it. Otherwise it's there, clear as a shaft of moonlight through the trees.
--Heron Mist, "The Hidden Path"

Magic doesn't do things the way you expect. If it did, it wouldn't be magic.
--Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The Changeling

To the six essential questions the elves reply: Who? Why, us, of course. What? The Manifestation of Elfin on Earth. When? Ever Now. Where? Always here. How? Magic and Enchantment. And Why? Because it is our destiny.
--The Silver Elves

It is said that the land of Faery is as near as breath. So it is. And as far away as a land beneath the waves or deep underground. That is true too. Faërie logic allows for this contradiction.
--Greg, "The Faery"

As through the hard rock go the branching silver veins; as into the solid land run the creeks and gulfs from the unresting sea; as the lights and influences of the upper worlds sink silently through the earth's atmosphere; so doth Faerie invade the world of men.
--George MacDonald, Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

I longed with all my heart for a fresh green silence between living water and forests.
--Renée Vivien (tr. Jeanette H. Foster), A Woman Appeared to Me

...the mere presence of the Otherworld kindles in us the spark of higher consciousness, or imagination. It is the stories and tales and visions of the Otherworld--the magical, enchanted land just beyond the walls of the manifest world--which awaken and expand in human beings the very notions of beauty, of reverence, of love and nobility, and all the higher virtues.
--Stephen Lawhead, The Paradise War

The land changes. Faerie overlays the land and comes and goes with the waxing and waning of eldritch tides. And those follow the lead of faerie time, which is no' like time in this world at all. It does no' flow straight nor consistent, and I canna' help ye understand its passing. Indeed, it does no' quite pass. It ... spirals. It goes and returns, always moving, never changing, for Faerie is an eternal world.
--Cliff Seruntine, An Ogham Wood

Legend-making is not something that took place in the dim and distant past but a continuing process.
--Jennifer Westwood, Albion: A Guide to Legendary Britain

Dragons are everywhere. They are the roaring of the wind, a flicker in the night sky, a rustling in the forest. They are the glint beneath a desert sun, a stirring in still waters, the fury in the eye of a storm.
--S. A. Caldwell, Dragonworld: Secrets of the Dragon Domain

Elves are children of starlight, rather than stardust. Light or Dark, they carry the light and song of the stars.
--Dan o'Dea, comment on "Dark Elves in the style of Liryen"

Faeries are not diminutive in size or scope. They are pure energy and will swallow you whole.
--faerypotter

The stars. So beautiful, so mysterious, so alluring are they -- so unreachable, pure, strange, and glorious that they could only be of Faêrie. Go into the wilderness on a clear night and look up. Look long. Then you will have seen something of Faêrie.
--Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Lady of the Sorrows, Ch. 3 "Caermelor Part II"

Elves and Faeries often hide in plain sight, by pretending to pretend to be who we really are.
--The Silver Elves

The Elven Way passes beyond the fields of the known into the forest of the unknown illuminated by the glow of the elves.
--The Silver Elves, The Elven Way: The Magical Path of the Shining Ones

Breathtakingly fair were they, with a shining beauty that was not of Erith. All were arrayed in splendid raiment of green and gold, and mounted on magnificently caparisoned steeds whose bridles glittered with tiny bells, like chains of stars. The knights among them wore golden helmets. Clasped about their limbs were finely chased greaves. Some bore in their hands golden spears like shafts of pale sunlight. To see these riders was startling, like a first glimpse of new blossom in Spring -- a sudden enchantment glimmering against boughs that lately stretched stark and black. To see them was to truly awaken, for the first time.
--Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Battle of Evernight, Ch. 8 "Avlantia"

A faint shimmer of radiance surrounded them. Their voices fell like flower petals on water, as musical as birdsong in the morning. They spoke in a language Ashalind did not understand: a tongue as smooth as polished silver, as rich as the jewel-hoards of dragons. Some wore scarlet and gold and amber like leaping flames, some were clad in green and silver like moonlight on leaves, some in soft gray like curling smoke.
--Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Battle of Evernight, Ch. 8 "Avlantia"

Faêrie, have my bones. Forever may I live,
But of deathless years I vow that I would give
All, to walk once more beneath thy singing trees,
Else to glimpse again the jewels of thy seas,
Or to breathe once more the wind that scours thy sky.
Faêrie, have my bones, and peaceful shall I lie.
--"A Song of the Exiles", Cecilia Dart-Thornton, The Battle of Evernight, Ch. 11 "The Bitterbynde"

And dreams of olde awaken us,
Slumbering down the ages,
Of Elfin's dawn arising,
foretold by elven sages.
--The Silver Elves, The New Dawn of Elfin

Elfin is the singer
And we elves are the song
--The Silver Elves

The elven say the trees are the flute of the wind, and the wind the breath of the stars.
--The Silver Elves

By the Elf Star the Earth is healed
And to our magic all do yield.
--The Silver Elves, "Healing Spell on the Elven Star for Earth Day"

Some people ever wish to limit us. They say we can't be elves or faeries because of this, that, or the other thing. However, it is in the nature of elves to ignore such rantings.
--The Silver Elves, Elf Magic Mail Book 2

I feel my Elfland real, and manifesting daily, and I would share my Elfland and my dreams with you; and yet, I would like for you to share elven dreams with me.
--The Elf Queen's Daughters, Elf Magic Mail Book 2

It is in the merging of one's everyday life with one's magic that it all comes alive. We are manifesting elfin. Faerie becomes real through us.
--The Silver Elves, Elf Magic Mail Book 2

The Elven Stars radiate enchantment. They don't determine our fate but rather sing to us of our destiny.
--The Silver Elves

The Elven Path, the magick way,
Take us to the hidden glade,
A place wherein the true self born,
Wisdom gained of eldritch form,
Drink deep of the ancient brew,
On the hazel nuts we chew,
Walk the woods, both out and in,
Reunite with our fae kin.
--Robin Green-Elk

last updated 8/08/2021