“Nothing is sadder than a child burdened by reality, after all. Those stories were our family fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.”

“After a childhood reading fairy tales and myths, is it any wonder that when I began to write my own stories I included fairy tales? Fairy tales are storytelling at its most basic. They’ve been with mankind for as long as people have told stories to each other. Fairy tales speak to something intrinsic in humans—they touch our most primitive selves. How else to explain that the Cinderella story is told in nearly every society on earth? To think of fairy tales as merely stories for children is to ignore thousands of years when fairy tales were used to teach morality, to warn, and to entertain both children and adults.”

“So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

“Aren’t all fairy tales based in fact? You yourself are supposed to be nothing more than a myth.Pandora’s box is a story parents read to their children at night,” she countered. “That means life itself is afairy tale. Like the characters, we all live and love and search for a happily-ever-after.”

“This true difference in me now: I had these experiances, these tales, more of this life. So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”