There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than can enter an ear. It is both the grandeur and the pain of the remoter moods that they avoid the pathway of sound.

I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales.

All the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark.

Dragons and bridges are very much something out of fairy tales and fantasy.

All of my work is influenced by fairy tales, and I hope my work shows Hans Christian Anderson's influence.

There are constant cycles in history. There is loss, but it is always followed by regeneration. The tales of our elders who remember such cycles are very important to us now.

Definitely they write themselves. It's an amazing experience. It's like the characters have come alive and are sitting on my shoulder talking to me, telling me their tales.

While many alternate reality stories ask, 'What might have been?' parallel universe stories literalize the war between good and evil that plays inside each of us every day. It's what makes this type of story so perfect for many fantasy tales: we're all just a coin flip away from being entirely different people.

Folk tales, fairy tales, religion, the occult - these are the things I'm most passionate about, even more than cinema. And I'm very passionate about cinema.

I think people should read fairy tales, because we're hungry for a mythology that will speak to our fears.

There's a long history of anthropomorphic animals in Japanese literature. The so-called 'funny animal scrolls' were the first narratives in Japanese history, and the heroes of many folk tales have animals as their companions.

Fairy tales opened up a door into my imagination - they don't conform to the reality that's around you as a child. I started reading when I was three and read everything, but I wanted to be an actress.

Fairy tales, before they were sanitized, were very dark, and kids love that. 'Coraline' by Neil Gaiman feels like Beckett for kids. I think there's plenty of room for that. And I think there's a danger of being too patronizing to children, having things too sanitized.

Those of us who can remember our childhoods will recall how ardently we relished the moment of the bedtime story, when our mother or father would sit down beside us in the semi-dark and read from a book of fairy tales.

People quote lines to me all the time. I'm always surprised - everybody has a favorite movie, and they're always different. I'm always shocked. People stop me on the street and throw lines at me from 'Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight' and 'Deep Space Nine.' 'Shawshank' happens a lot because they play it so much on TV.

An honest tale speeds best being plainly told.

I cannot tell how the truth may be; I say the tale as 'twas said to me.

... believe not every tale.

What is so tedious as a twice-told tale?

The tale runs as it pleases the teller.