Once you step onto the fairy path, it's almost like there's no way off. You have to keep going.

I went and studied graphic design, because it seemed to me that advertising is more honest - the image actually has a function. But once I started on that, I realized that was really boring.

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.

It seems to me that art has lost its connection to spirit.

Art always used to involve spirit. Painters painted spirit. They painted by commission things to go into churches, and that was painting spirit. Or they would paint people of wealth, and they would try to show how they had power, and again, this is sort of spirit.

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

Fairies are becoming much more popular. I see fairyland as this big sea, and the tide is sometimes out.