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Aging & Wisdom Quote by Terri Windling

"One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from"

About this Quote

Windling slips a quiet manifesto into what sounds like a cozy defense of fairy tales: fantasy isn’t an escape hatch from reality, it’s a pressure reading of it. The line “right around the corner” shrinks the distance between the mundane and the marvelous until they’re basically neighbors. That’s the trick folklore has always pulled - not inventing new worlds so much as revealing the weird voltage in this one. A forest isn’t just scenery; it’s where people got lost, disappeared, met strangers, made bad bargains. The magic is a narrative way of saying: pay attention, danger and desire live close by.

The subtext is a rebuke to modern fantasy’s tendency toward sealed-off universes with their own maps, currencies, and lore bibles. Windling, coming from an artist’s practice rather than a scholar’s podium, argues for imagination as close looking. “That’s where the old stuff came from” recasts tradition as lived experience distilled into story: famine becoming ogres, patriarchy becoming wicked stepmothers, childhood fear taking the shape of wolves. Folklore isn’t quaint; it’s observational, sometimes brutal, often funny in a dark way.

Context matters here: Windling’s work has long championed myth as an active, contemporary art form - especially attentive to landscape, community, and the politics of whose stories get kept. Her point isn’t nostalgia for “the old stuff.” It’s a reminder that the raw material for enchantment is still available, if you stop treating reality like the boring part.

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APA Style (7th ed.)
Windling, Terri. (2026, January 15). One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-things-about-folklore-and-fairy-134779/

Chicago Style
Windling, Terri. "One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-things-about-folklore-and-fairy-134779/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One of the best things about folklore and fairy tales is that the best fantasy is what you find right around the corner, in this world. That's where the old stuff came from." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-best-things-about-folklore-and-fairy-134779/. Accessed 9 Feb. 2026.

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Terri Windling is a Artist from USA.

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