Sometimes, violent details have been eliminated from fairy tales simply because they were deemed too graphic. So one does not, at the end of Disney's version of 'Cinderella,' see the stepsisters' eyes get pecked and pecked by doves, because Disney wanted to market the story for wholesome family viewing.
When I was studying, I was part of a children's entertainment company, and I'd have to dress up as a pirate or fairy and go to corporate parties and entertain the children. I will never, ever do that again. The worst was the demanding children - I've never been so exhausted doing a job as that one.
I don't think one should incentivise the losing of teeth. I find the idea of a child getting an iPad, or a £20 note, for losing a tooth, utterly abhorrent. Fifty pence, or a pound at most, is what my children can expect from the Tooth Fairy.
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace.
My first marriage was very traditional, in the church, and then we left the church and went to the reception hall. So this time, I'd like to go fairy tale all the way.
I've learned that I want what I deny. I want someone who is crazy about me, who treats me like a princess. I want the picture-perfect fairy tale stuff.
'Star Wars' is more fairy tale than true science fiction.
As I read more and more fairy tales as an adult, I found massive collusion between their 'subjects' and those in my fiction: childhood, nature, sexuality, transformation. I realized that it wasn't by accident that I was drawn to their narrative structure and motifs.
Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.
I want to tell women that you need to love yourself and make yourself a priority. It's only when you are happy yourself, can you make everyone else around you happy. I am still a dreamer and still believe in fairy tales, but there is only that much one should give another person. You need to keep something for yourself.
Every time a child says I don't believe in fairies there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.
Artless fairy stories enchant us in our first years and retain their hold on us until our last.
I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales.
When you hear the words 'magic' and 'story', they will probably evoke thoughts of your favourite fairy tales from childhood. Storybook pages abound with all manner of magic: fantastical fairies, wish-granting genies, or even a certain boy wizard.
Sometimes you have to censor books. When I read 'Peter Rabbit,' I skip the part about Peter's father ending up in one of Mrs. McGregor's pies. I also hid the book of 'Grimm Fairy Tales.' They're just too grim for my grandkids. Reality will come soon enough.
To portray an iconic character has been brilliant in itself, and to be able to do that on a show like 'Once Upon a Time' enhances that because the show puts a spin on characters and makes them very different and puts core values that are very different that aren't in the original fairy tales a lot of people relate to.
I've always been a huge fantasy fan. I was always interested in fairy tales and anything with magic or dragons... I was always drawn to those types of stories.
You can get this feeling of the English or Scottish or Irish or Welsh fairy, but it is by nature very elusive. It would be possible to pin down a German fairy, but the English one just vanishes, becomes the shadow under the trees.
I have been writing fairy tales for as long as I can remember. Not much has changed in terms of my natural attraction to the narrative techniques of fairy tales. My appreciation of them in the traditional stories has deepened, especially of flat and unadorned language, intuitive logic, abstraction, and everyday magic.
Throughout any given season of 'The Bachelor,' the women exclaim that the experience is like a fairy tale. They suffer the machinations of reality television, pursuing - along with several other women, often inebriated - the promise of happily ever after.
I never grew up reading or fantasizing about fairy tales. I was always too busy, like, outside being a kid.
When I was four years old, my father, who was a colonel in the army, was stationed in Salzburg, Austria. Across the street from our house was an ancient castle on a cliff. So when I first heard fairy tales, I felt as if the magic of 'Cinderella' or 'Sleeping Beauty' was taking place right in my own neighborhood.
I believe in fairy tales. They are the basis of all our performance of storytelling and film-making - when we twist the real events of the world into something that offers us hope - and I believe in that.
And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.