"As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm"
About this Quote
The second sentence is the quiet detonator. “She, too” tells you Lee is locating herself inside a lineage of contrariness; her later work doesn’t emerge from rebellion-for-its-own-sake but from a family habit of tilting the frame. “Reverse the norm” is a deceptively mild phrase for what it implies in Lee’s universe: gender roles swapped, morality unlatched from tidy lessons, beauty braided with danger. The subtext is that the so-called norm is already a story someone made up and called natural. If fairy tales can be invented at home, then cultural rules can be, too - and they can be rewritten.
Contextually, Lee came up as a writer when fantasy was still policed by masculine gatekeeping and “traditional” myth. By rooting her creative DNA in a mother’s improvisations and inversion, she legitimizes the outsider angle as ancestral rather than fashionable. It’s a neat, almost offhand manifesto: the best fantasies don’t escape reality; they expose how much of reality is just consensus fiction.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mother |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lee, Tanith. (2026, January 15). As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-child-my-mother-told-me-lots-of-fairy-150109/
Chicago Style
Lee, Tanith. "As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-child-my-mother-told-me-lots-of-fairy-150109/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-a-child-my-mother-told-me-lots-of-fairy-150109/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
