To me, intolerance leads down a dreadful path that the world sometimes seems to be going to.

My art's not safe, I don't want it to be safe, it's not meant to be safe, its controversial, it takes you into deep areas, it's a journey, its starts off in safe areas but it gets into deep waters.

Anytime that is ‘betwixt and between’ or transitional is the faeries’ favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational.

Nobody wanted to publish a book about fairies; they said people wouldn't be interested. Luckily, I discovered Lady Cottington and her pressed fairies, which revived a huge amount of interest in fairies, so I could go ahead and do the book I wanted to do.

Faeries are seen through the heart, not through the eyes. Remember that faeries inhabit the interior of the earth and the interior of all things, so look, in the first place, in the interior of yourself.

It was ironic that there I was finally painting the pictures I'd always wanted to paint and feeling very much at home in the countryside, and I ended up working in New York City, which is definitely the archetypal city.

The myths and legends about Faerie are many and diverse, and often contradictory. Only one thing is certain - that nothing is certain. All things are possible in the land of Faerie.