When I was a child, I spake as a child; I understood as a child. When I became a man I may have put away childish things?but the man I became was shaped in childhood, and that shape remains forever. Fairy tales shaped me. I have since "put them away." That is, the adult is a mostly rational creature, aware that fairy tales are not "real," but are a fantasy, an entertaining escape from the problems of the real world. As a man, I make such tales an object of my attention and maintain an analytical control over them: I read them. I interpret them; they don't interpret me. I master the tales, placing them within my memory and my experience exactly where I wish them to be. Fairy tales dwell within the adult. But as a child all full of wonder I approached the fairy tale as something real indeed.