C. S. Lewis Quotes About Fairy Tales

• Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  C. S. Lewis (2009). “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 2)”, p.7, HarperCollins UK

• When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

  C. S. Lewis

  Fear, Children, Growing Up

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Children are not deceived by fairy-tales; they are often and gravely deceived by school-stories. Adults are not deceived by science-fiction ; they can be deceived by the stories in the women's magazines.

  C. S. Lewis

  Children, School, Adults

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be your affectionate Godfather, C. S. Lewis.

  C. S. Lewis

  Girl, Book, Reading

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “The Chronicles of Narnia Complete 7-Book Collection with Bonus Book: Boxen”, p.106, Harper Collins

• You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.

  C. S. Lewis

  Childhood, Wish, Fairy Tale

  C. S. Lewis (2014). “Letters to an American Lady”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• Do you mean to say," asked Caspian, "that you three come from a round world (round like a ball) and you've never told me! It's really too bad for you. Because we have fairy-tales in which there are round worlds and I have always loved them … Have you ever been to the parts where people walk about upside-down?" Edmund shook his head. "And it isn't like that," he added. "There's nothing particularly exciting about a round world when you're there.

  C. S. Lewis

  Mean, People, Three

• At all ages, if [fantasy and myth] is used well by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. Bat at its best it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus, instead of 'commenting on life,' can add to it.

  C. S. Lewis

  Class, Giving, Age

• The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

  C. S. Lewis

  Hero, Men, Soul

  C. S. Lewis (2002). “On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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