“His [(Rumpelstiltskin)] feeling that his name, which is his identity, must be kept secret, or else he'll be revealed to the world as the hunchbacked, shriveled, ridiculous creature he knows himself to be. And if that happens, he'll disappear.”

“I don't know these stories as well as they know me, I've discovered.”

“When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her.”

“A short-haired Barbie would be an oxymoron.”

“Loneliness is the alchemy that turns an adolescent into an adult. Adolescents are profoundly lonely, but believe that their pangs will be solved by finding a lover, while the adult recognizes loneliness as the defining term of the human condition.”

“The most important thing to him is his drive, his purpose, his desire to give meaning to the experience of dying.”

“He'll survive," he answered her. "Just as he's survived everything else in his life. But he'll never be the same.”