I have never dreamed of being a princess. I have not longed for Prince Charming. I have and do long for something resembling a happily ever after. I am supposed to be above such flights of fantasy, but I am not. I am enamored of fairy tales.
‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is a fairy tale, but it starts in a place you really believe, and that came from spending two months wandering around the slums picking up stories and talking to people.
To be honest, Peter Pan was one of those fairy tales that I sort of related to, and I think that’s the case with a lot of kids.
Fairy tales were important to me. Aren’t they for any kid? My sister says I spent a good five years of my youth convinced I would grow up to be a princess.
Well, it’s quite strange because there are three new Wiggles – Simon the red wiggle, Lachlan the purple wiggle and myself. We were already in the company doing different roles. Like, I was the fairy, the ballerina, and that kind of thing originally, and then I played Dorothy the Dinosaur and I was a Wiggles dancer.
I grew up with Bible stories, which are like fairy tales, because my father was a minister. We heard verses and prayers every day. I liked the gorier Bible stories. I did have a book of Chinese fairy tales. All the people except the elders looked like Italians. But we were not a family that had fiction books.
I was interested in dark subject matter for sure, including folklore, fairy tales, mythology, archetypal stories of people going into the bowels of the forest.
Look at Jane Austen. Her characters derive in a reasonably straight line from fairy tales.
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.
Getting to wear Chanel is my version of a fairy tale. Not that I would wear it every day – my style is more jeans and T-shirts – but it’s kind of fun.
I’ve gotten to hang out with Elmo, I’m the Fairy Shoeperson on ‘Sesame Street’. So hopefully our kids will get to see and hear me as much as they’re able.
Fairy tales and folk tales are part of the DNA of all stories and great fun to write.
I always wanted the fairy tale, but now I want someone who is a great partner.
I think that true love, fairy tales, the positive messages of positive stories – I don’t think those ever die. Sometimes we like to hide them in sarcasm or irony, but they are still there, and they still move us.
I love fairy tales because I think that behind fairy tales, there is always a meaning.
You cannot make a social-conscious picture in which you say that the intermediary between the hand and the brain is the heart. I mean, that’s a fairy tale – definitely.
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.
Nature is a book, a letter, a fairy tale (in the philosophical sense) or whatever you want to call it.
The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of ‘SpongeBob SquarePants.’
I think it’s really hard to draw a hard-and-fast line and say ‘Grimm’s Fairy Tales’ doesn’t count as science fiction or fantasy. Or at what point do we say mythology is not fantasy, so reading mythology when you’re young does not count as an exposure to fantasy?
I like Cinderella, I really do. She has a good work ethic. I appreciate a good, hard-working gal. And she likes shoes. The fairy tale is all about the shoe at the end, and I’m a big shoe girl.
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.
My son Cooper has just turned ten and the sarcasm fairy has already started to take up residence inside his body. Not only am I living with my mother – again! – but I’ve also got her mini-me to contend with.
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.
People don’t like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.
Artless fairy stories enchant us in our first years and retain their hold on us until our last.
Fairy tales read before bed tend to make me dream. They’re all quite violent stories, as are my dreams.
The legacy of the fairy story in my brain is that everything will work out. In fiction it would be very hard for me, as a writer, to give a bad ending to a good character, or give a good ending to a bad character. That’s probably not a very postmodern thing to say.
I love the Queen. I love the whole fairy tale of the Royal Family; the Crown Jewels; Buckingham Palace; the tourist attraction. But really, is that what we’ve got a monarchy for? It’s just for tourism, and then you survive and live off taxpayers’ money?
Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you’re seeing them.
Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.
I never grew up reading or fantasizing about fairy tales. I was always too busy, like, outside being a kid.
Why the fairy tale of Willie Mays making a brilliant World Series catch, and then dashing off to play stickball in the street with his teenage pals. That’s baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, ‘I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth.’
At a gig in Liverpool I had this lady give me 21 cup cakes she had made herself. It’s not really rock’n’roll is it? Tom Jones gets pants thrown at him and I get given fairy cakes.
Why should we strive, with cynic frown, to knock their fairy castles down?
I don’t really care what people tell children – when you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, one more fib won’t hurt. But I am infuriated by the growing notion, posited in some touchy-feely quarters, that all women are, or can be, beautiful.
Oh, gosh, I have always been a huge fan of horror since I was a child. I know this is going to sound really weird, but I think it started with fairy tales.
It’s a job. When I’m writing I’m going to do it five to six days a week and I’m going to work for four to six hours a day. There’s no magic writing fairy. It’s just hard work.
I’m living a fairy tale.
I was 12 when it really hit me. I did children’s theatre camp during the summers and played a fairy in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ The next summer, I played Clytemnestra in ‘Agamemnon’ and I was like, ‘OK, this is amazing.’
Dragons and bridges are very much something out of fairy tales and fantasy.
My secret ambition was always to provide music for animation films: something with an Indian theme, either a fairy tale or mythological tale or on the Krishna theme. I still have a very deep desire, but these sorts of chances don’t always come.
Yes, hell exists. It is not a fairy tale. One indeed burns there. This hell is not at the end of life. It is here. At the beginning. Hell is what the infant must experience before he gets to us.
I have very happy memories of fairy tales. My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales. And she was an actress, so she used to act out for me the different characters in all these fairy tales.
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.
I was the original Cinderella girl, looking for the happy ending in the fairy story. But my fantasy prince never came.
