Quote

In the old fairy tales, often a 'moral' was tacked on at the end of the story - say, if a book was going to be marketed to young readers. And the morals don't really suit the stories at all, which makes them super weird - part of why I love the tradition so much. I do play with this, though I am more concerned with ethics than morals.

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad.

I think, reading the Grimm's fairy tales, they all have some sort of moral component to them, teaching you a lesson.

Fairytales work on two levels. On a conscious level, they are stories of true love and triumph and overcoming difficult odds and so are pleasurable to read. But they work on a deeper and symbolic level in that they play out our universal psychological dramas and hidden desires and fears.

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them.

Many people think fairy tales and retellings of fairy tales are only for children, but I'm not the only writer to take an old tale and retell it for a sophisticated adult audience.

What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.

Fairy-tales are nice.

Fairytales were never really meant for children; they were meant as cautionary tales for teenagers on the verge of growing up.