"how to be brave in the face of that terror-which is a terror we all feel, not just kids. To wit, here I am, at sixty-one, going back to these stories and finding more comfort, more terror, and ever more relevance."
"Something wonderful about the Grimms is how their stories are a kind of door between the fantastical and the facts of what it means to be human in the world. They're a hinge between the historical truth and, on the other side, the truth of the human condition-of the way things are, and have been, and will forever be."
"I grew up with Hans Christian Andersen. I can't even articulate the impact that his sensibility has had on my sensibility. In his work, everything is animate, everything has a soul, everything has a story. Boy, that got me at a very young age. His work convinced me that all things (matchsticks and tin soldiers, flow"
A childhood habit of repeatedly listening to the Brothers Grimm story "The Juniper Tree" combined an aversion to fright with learning courage. Stories like the Grimms' teach how to be brave in the face of universal terror and can offer more comfort, more terror, and renewed relevance when revisited later in life. The Grimm tales, accompanied by Maurice Sendak's illustrations in one edition, are funny and terrifying and act as a direct route to the collective subconscious, feeling both utterly familiar and utterly strange. Hans Christian Andersen's tales animate ordinary things, endowing them with soul and stories that shape sensibility from a young age.
Read at The New Yorker
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