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“Once we have accepted the story, we cannot escape the story's fate.”
― P.L. Travers

“I haven't finished revisiting Sleeping Beauty. As a faerie tale, that one is rife with inherent difficulties. After all, the world doesn't stop just because one person is asleep.”
― Anna Sheehan, A Long, Long Sleep

“I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story.”
― �ʷ������－P����, Shugo Chara!, Vol. 2: Friends in Need

“A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned.”
― Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories

“She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear ��
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.”
― Anne Sexton, Transformations

“Little princess, lovely as the dawn, well named Aurore.”
― Cameron Dokey, Beauty Sleep

“A mist. A great mist. It covered the entire kingdom. And everyone in it - the good people and the not so good, the young people and the not-so-young, and even Briar Rose's mother and father fell asleep. Everyone slept: lords and ladies, teacher and tummlers, dogs and doves, rabbits and rabbitzen and all kinds of citizens. So fast asleep they were, they were not able to wake up for a hundred years.”
― Jane Yolen, Briar Rose

“…I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.”
― Orson Scott Card, Maps in a Mirror: The Short Fiction of Orson Scott Card

“Nothing is easier than to be original thanks to a false absolute, all the more so when this absolute is negative, for to destroy is easier than to construct. Humanism is the reign of horizontality, either naive or perfidious; and since it is also �� and by that very fact �� the negation of the Absolute, it is a door open to a multitude of sham absolutes, which in addition are often negative, subversive, and destructive. It is not too difficult to be original with such intentions and such means; all one needs is a little imagination. It should be noted that subversion includes not only philosophical and moral schemes designed to undermine the normal order of things, but also �� in literature and on a seemingly harmless plane �� all that can satisfy an unhealthy curiosity: namely all the narrations that are fantastic, grotesque, lugubrious, "dark," thus satanic in their way, and well-fitted to predispose men to all excesses and all perversions; this is the sinister side of romanticism. Without fearing in the least to be "childlike" or caring in the least to be "adult," we readily dispense with these somber lunacies, and are fully satisfied with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty.”
― Frithjof Schuon, To Have a Center

“Curses can be tricky things. Sometimes they demand an impossible price, one you might not be willing to pay.”
― Nisha J. Tuli, To Wake a Kingdom

“Who knows what wild things Sleeping Beauty dreamt of while waiting to awake?”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Radiance

“It's her. The woman from the photo."
The plate was foxed around the edges, but the painting at its center was still intact. The annotation beneath gave the title as Sleeping Beauty and the artist's name, Edward Radcliffe. The woman in the painting was lying in a fantastical treetop bower of leaves and flower buds, all of which were waiting in stasis for the chance to bloom. Birds and insects were interspersed amongst the woven branches; long red hair flowed in waves around her sleeping face, which was glorious in repose. Her eyes were closed, but the features of her face- the elegant cheekbones and bow lips- were unmistakable.
"She was his model," Elodie whispered.”
― Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

“To believe in anything takes risk," Arpien said. "Perhaps the risk of disappointed hopes is greater than the reward of fulfilled ones.”
― Sarah E. Morin, Waking Beauty

“She sighed. "Well, there's nothing for it. You better come with me so I can keep an eye on you."

"I thought I was keeping an eye on you?"

"Well, it can't hurt if I look back.”
― Sarah E. Morin, Waking Beauty

“A punch of erotic adrenaline took the breath right out of him ��”
― Juliette Cross, The Emerald Lily

“I want you so much, I feel like if I don’t make you mine soon, then some part of me will break away and disappear into the unknown. Then another will break away and another, until there’s nothing left of me at all but a hollow void. A shell of a man.”
― Juliette Cross, The Emerald Lily

“You undo me, woman,�� he breathed.
“You make me whole,�� she whispered.”
― Juliette Cross, The Emerald Lily

“Women are easier loved than understood. How do you understand someone who came into existence when you were sleeping?”
― Vincent Okay Nwachukwu, Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1

“A bramble took root in Val’s stubborn feet. Maybe if she stood there long enough, briar tangles would wrap her up within an enchanted wall, and the wall would stand guard around the sleeping girl until the prince came and burned everything down.

That’s how the story went, right?”
― Claire Legrand, Sawkill Girls

“Carrying her over to his bed, he slowly laid her on it. She sank into the mattress with a dreamy murmur of a sigh.
Though the protective impulse he had felt toward her earlier had returned full force, the soft and sensual moan from her lips filled him with a moment's blinding lust.
Dear God. A tremor of hunger ran through him. His stare traveled over her lax face and down her white neck to her creamy chest. He swallowed hard, gazing at her breasts.
Somehow, he became fixated on them again.
Heart pounding, he moved slowly and with caution sat on the edge of the bed. Desire slammed through his veins, but he only meant to look. She was a harlot, she wouldn't care, as long as he had money, which he did, lots of it. Yet it amazed him that such beauty could be purchased for the taking. She was exquisite, with the dusky fringe of her lashes fanned above her cheeks in sleep.
The thick and wavy cloud of her satiny brown hair flowed back from the pale oval of her face and spilled across his pillow.
He marveled at the creamy shimmer of her complexion in the firelight, her flushed cheeks like delicate pink-tinted porcelain. His gaze traveled over her smooth forehead, the delicate twin arches of her light brown eyebrows, and her small, prettily formed nose.
He would not have guessed her any common sort of wench. Then his attention strayed to her pink lips in ever-growing desire, a gathering smolder darkening his eyes.
She had a very charming chin, slightly pronounced, and hinting at a firm stubbornness of character. He wanted to nibble its smooth rounded curve.”
― Gaelen Foley, My Dangerous Duke

“She’s still under a curse. And this one you cannot save her from, because she put her own self under it.”
― Sarah E. Morin, Waking Beauty

“I will be your salvation, girl, but in time . . . in time, you will be ours.”
― Lisa M. Green, Midnight Descending

“Once upon a time, a witch laid a curse which cast a princess into an eternal slumber.
One day a young man appeared, intending to awake her.
But then, a voice whispers
"Awaken the princess from her sleep? What a cruel thing to do! For what if the princess wishes not to receive the kiss of awakening, but rather to continue to sleep forever?”
― Princess Tutu (Ikuko Itoh)

“The glow intensified. She reached out with a tentative hand, aching to touch one of the jagged edges, unsure of why she had an overwhelming urge to do so.

Her finger inches from a colored spike, the silence in the room turned dense, her ears beginning to ache with the pressure. Cracks appeared in the air, like a shattered mirror, reflecting the light along its fractured edges. The light reached into the cracks, filling them up, then a blinding flash . . .”
― Lisa M. Green, Dawn Rising

“He could see her breasts lift and fall gently with her breathing. She'd thrown off her blanket. He watched now. Feeling like an adolescent. Just as ridiculous, just as enthralled.
He imagined going to her, lying next to her on the bed, pulling her into his arms, waiting for her to stir awake. He imagined the feel of the fine, fragile fabric of the night rail against his hands---it would be warm, fragrant from her--- and the whisper of sound it would make as it slid over her body when he lifted it from her. He imagined his hands gliding over the curve of her shoulders and hips; over the petal skin of her breasts, and her softer-still nipples. He imagined her lithe body rippling beneath his touch as he discovered her again, and thoroughly this time, he imagined his mouth finding, tasting every bit of her, the hollow of her belly, the musk between her legs, her soft cries of pleasure as he did. He imagined the slow final taking of her, moving inside her as she clung to him---
Oh, God.
He wanted. He wanted. He wanted.”
― Julie Anne Long, Beauty and the Spy

“On the day of the christening, Elizabeth, with Tomas by her side, carried her daughter, who was swathed in a lace robe, towards the priest who stood in the main hall. As she looked around the assembled guests, smiling, one in particular caught her eye and she stumbled, staggering with the baby in her arms.
Damien Chegwidden. She couldn't help but to be reminded of the tale of the bad fairy at the christening of Sleeping Beauty, a story that had fascinated her as a child. She had often wondered what it must be like to sleep for a hundred years and then wake to find a world utterly changed. Was his presence to be a bad omen for her daughter?”
― Kayte Nunn, The Botanist's Daughter

“Slipping into a habit of constant sleeping and laziness after work can be a slippery slope for your health. It's important to strike a balance between rest and activity, as too much of the former can lead to a sedentary lifestyle, draining your energy and vitality. Make time for movement, hobbies, and connections to reignite your spark and nourish your body and mind”
― Shaila Touchton

“Rahim is a little tricky, but I think of him as Birdman, because he has really big ears that could easily expand to wings if he gets bitten by a radioactive canary. Crazy, I know, but in comics, that kind of thing happens all the time. Anyway, I can always switch him to Sleeping Beauty. He’s not that beautiful, but he is that sleeping”
― Gordon Korman, The Unteachables

“I gazed at the horn, the long, corkscrew curve of it, the tip so sharp it was not actually visible to my mortal eyes, except as the narrowest of shadows. It filled me with the strangest desire to touch it, as if it were a spindle and I the hapless witch-touched maiden.”
― Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

“I’m living an “a-ticket�� dream. That’s the ticket you would need back then for something lame, like riding the trolley, walking through the staircases of Sleeping Beauty’s castle, or sitting in the theater to watch an Abraham Lincoln robot put you to sleep. Four snores and seven years ago.”
― GLEN NESBITT, SUS: Short Unpredictable Stories