Marina Warner
Marina Warner
Dame Marina Sarah Warner, DBE, FRSL, FBAis a British novelist, short story writer, historian and mythographer. She is known for her many non-fiction books relating to feminism and myth. She has written for many publications, including The London Review of Books, the New Statesman, Sunday Times, The Telegraph and Vogue. She has been a visiting professor, given lectures and taught on the faculties of many universities...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth9 November 1946
Marina Warner quotes about
lying character thinking
The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due.
odds teeth fairy-tale
The more one knows fairy tales the less fantastical they appear; they can be vehicles of the grimmest realism, expressing hope against all the odds with gritted teeth.
writing names people
It seemed to me to be a parable of the exchange of goods, rather Marxist in some ways, in the new world of global forces. What the forgers do is write the brand name to try and change it, and it works! Loads of people buy fake Prada handbags, or Chanel sunglasses; they've been changed. They have been truly, really changed.
pain vocabulary pleasure
The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain.
children years two
The price the Virgin demanded was purity, and the way the educators of Catholic children have interpreted this for nearly two thousand years is sexual chastity. Impurity, we were taught, follows from many sins, but all are secondary to the principal impulse of the devil in the soul--lust.
heart simple order
Creating simplicity often makes the heart leap; order has been restored, the crooked made straight. But order is understanding that things cannot be made simple, that complexity reigns and must be accepted.
night law magic
For example, John Law's Mississippi Company venture printed shares, and the money had gone up in smoke when it had been inscribed objects. The inscription made it magic and changed its meaning. That's how objects become charmed in The Arabian Nights, and they are often originally ordinary objects. The carpet is an ordinary, paltry object. The lamp is a rusty old lamp, and the bottles jinns are imprisoned within are old bottles. They are changed by the magic and the jinn's presence, and the jinn's presence is often embodied in the seal or inscription.
essence males female
The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.
spring opposites desire
Wonder has no opposite; it springs up already doubled in itself, compounded of dread and desire at once, attraction and recoil, producing a thrill, the shudder of pleasure and of fear.
romance erotic greek
Romance, in its earliest surviving form, was called ‘erotika pathemata’ by the Greeks - tales of erotic suffering.
scandal today revolution
The French Revolution printed money because they didn't have any, so they just printed it, and this was a revolutionary step which of course we are still reaping the huge consequences of today. It struck me that this was beginning to happen...there had been scandals where shares had been printed.
flow kind figures
Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.
mirrors looking-in-the-mirror
I avoid looking in the mirror.
school catholic fervent
I was brought up a Catholic and I was quite fervent, because I was sent to a convent school.