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I think parents today are looking for meaningful things for their kid. It's about feeding them something with meaning.

Every childhood has its talismans, the sacred objects that look innocuous enough to the outside world, but that trigger an onslaught of vivid memories when the grown child confronts them.

The minute that you bring a unicorn into a story, you know that it's a fairy tale or a fable, because unicorns don't exist as animals. They exist as fantasy creatures.

Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with the child's eye - it is very beautiful.

Childhood has its secrets and its mysteries; but who can tell or who can explain them!

I am fond of depicting the lives of young folks for one thing, and if you have parts for girls or young men, you must absolutely have young people to fill them - that is generally acknowledged now.

Kids search for what's relevant, what connects with their life... now. They know bad things happen like Hurricane Katrina. Through character driven stories, they explore what it's like to survive, thrive, and become more themselves.

I think looking back to my own childhood, the fact that so many of the stories I read allowed the possibility of frogs turning into princes, whether that has a sort of insidious affect on rationality, I'm not sure. Perhaps it's something for research.

I have a daughter, and fairies meant a lot to her growing up.

'Monsters,' everybody has the thought of monsters in your closet as a kid, and more importantly, the idea of becoming a parent. We're always kind of looking for those emotional nuggets. They're always at the heart of the story.