“To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.”

Source: Real Presences (1989), III: Presences, Ch. 4 (pp. 190-191).

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George Steiner74

American writer 1929–2020

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Quoted in 'Venerable Poets :Words to Pop Music beat 'by Cynthia Wolfe Boyton.

“To put it most simply, the oral traditional idiom persisted because—even in a written incarnation—it offered the only avenue to the immanent poetic tradition, the invisible but ever-present aesthetic context for all of the poems.”

John Miles Foley (1947–2012) American literary scholar

"Texts That Speak to Readers Who Hear: Old English Poetry and the Languages of Oral Tradition", in Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies, ed. Allen J. Frantzen (1991), p. 155

“A starving child is a frightful sight. A starving vampire, even worse.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

“Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)

“Tell me a story, Pew.
What kind of story, child?
A story with a happy ending.
There's no such thing in all the world.
As a happy ending?
As an ending.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping (2004), p. 49

“My children's books are written on the belief that every child has a talent and a passion. Each story unfolds into an adventure of nurturing that confidence until a passion blooms.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

On her purpose behind her books http://tolucantimes.info/section/inside-this-issue/young-author-makes-her-mark-in-the-world-of-children’s-literature/

“Under the spell of the Christmas story the locked up treasures of kindliness and sympathy come from the inside of the heart, where they are often kept imprisoned, to the outside of actual expression in deed and word. … It is the vision of the Christ-child which enables all men to get at the best treasures of their lives and offer them for use.”

Halford E. Luccock (1885–1960) American Methodist minister

Source: Fares, Please! (1915), Everything Upside Down, p. 186
Context: Charles Lamb, in one of his most delightful essays, sets high worth on the observance of All Fools' Day, because it says to a man: "You look wise. Pray correct that error!" Christmas brings the universal message to men: "You look important and great; pray correct that error." It overturns the false standards that have blinded the vision and sets up again in their rightful magnitude those childlike qualities by which we enter the Kingdom.
Christmas turns things inside out. Under the spell of the Christmas story the locked up treasures of kindliness and sympathy come from the inside of the heart, where they are often kept imprisoned, to the outside of actual expression in deed and word. … It is the vision of the Christ-child which enables all men to get at the best treasures of their lives and offer them for use.

“We are reading the story of our lives
As though we were in it
As though we had written it.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

“There neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified — more supremely noble than this very poem — this poem per se — this poem which is a poem and nothing more — this poem written solely for the poem's sake.”

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic

The Poetic Principle (1850)

“How starved they seemed for ordinary kindness”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

“To starve a child of the spell of the story, of the canter of the poem, oral or written, is a kind of living burial. It is to immure him in emptiness.”

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George Steiner74

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