As a child, I loved fairy tales because the story, the what-comes-next, is paramount. As an adult, I'm fascinated by their logic and illogic.

The fairytale has turned into a nightmare.

When I started acting, I didn't think of it as a career. I always thought Hollywood was this magical world where a fairy came down and said, 'Come live with the Munchkins; you are now one of us.' I didn't understand the concept of it as a career. I thought I would save up enough money to go to college.

No matter what you write, you actually can't help retelling a fairy tale somewhere along the way.

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

A peace agreement isn't like a fairy story. You don't live happily ever after.

I'm not a big fan of kids' movies that have this knowing snarkiness to them or this post-modern take on storytelling. I think that sails right over the heads of most kids. There's something to be said for a well-told fairy tale. There's a reason that these mythic stories stay with us.

I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.

I was very excited to do 'The Witches.' It was with one of my favorite directors, Nick Roeg, and I loved his work from 'Don't Look Now' and 'Eureka.' So I was very excited to work with him. The story was a very subversive fairy tale by Roald Dahl, and a fantastic part.

Gifts fall from heaven only in fairy tales.

The escape to an unchallenging fairy tale can be very nice and I'm all for that, but film can also challenge you to confront the realities of our world.

Everything is for sale in Hollywood; the fairy tale, the costume, the pumpkin, the footman and the mice.

Kids delight in 'magical thinking', whether in the form of the Tooth Fairy or the saints: whether you see these as comforting lies or eternal verities, they are part of how we help kids make sense of the world.

Even as a kid, I read 'Jung - Reflections and Individuation In Fairy Tales'; all the inner circle of Jung was a real huge thing for me.

Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over.

I think it's really hard to draw a hard-and-fast line and say 'Grimm's Fairy Tales' doesn't count as science fiction or fantasy. Or at what point do we say mythology is not fantasy, so reading mythology when you're young does not count as an exposure to fantasy?

Fairy tales, which teach a moral lesson, are about ourselves. Myth deals with forces greater than ourselves.

Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience.

I grew up with a lot of fairy tales. And they had an essence of darkness to them.

Fairy tales are with us day in and day out, not just in commercials, but references in the theater, movies, museums, schools, etc.