Quote

Gay writers now have both a sense of history and the fables that allows them to dwell in the realms of the ridiculous and at the same time talk seriously about things.

If you read the fables, 'Beowulf,' for example, you will know something about the person who writes them, and I like that. Secondly, they will not be about individuals; they will be about community. Thirdly, they're all about moralizing. Fourthly, the way they express themselves takes its tone from the oral tradition.

I wanted to write a new fable and see how many rules you could break.

How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

Mythologies become exhausting burdens, from a writer's perspective.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Fairy tales and folk tales have always played a role in my writing in one way or another.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.