“Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.”

“We all have such stories. It is a brutal arithmetic. But I - I am alive. You are alive. As long as we breathe, we can see and hear. As long as we can remember, all those gone before are alive inside us.”

“Aren't hidden doors the most alluring? The old stories point that out surely. Even the greatest heroes and heroines fall under the spell of a locked door.”

“He unpacks his bag of taleswith fingers quickas a weaver's picking the weft threads threading the warp.Watch his fingers.Watch his lipsspeaking the old familiar words: "Once there was and there was not, oh, best beloved, when the world was filled with wishes the way the sea is filled with fishes..."All those threadspulling us backto another world, another time,when goosegirls married welland frogs could rhyme,when maids spoke syllables of pearland stepmothers came to grief..... (from The Storyteller poem)”

“Stories," he'd said, his voice low and almost husky, "we are made up of stories. And even the ones that seem the most like lies can be our deepest hidden truths.”

“They [Fairy Tales] are talking about real emotions, telling true stories, through the medium of metaphor. People used to understand metaphor better than I think we do now. But these stories are so potent, they refuse to die.”

“What was can never be again.”