The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. When our days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled

Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted.

My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.