Without the ice, the earth will fall

I`ve realized that in all the great stories, even if there`s a happily-ever-after ending, there`s something sad.

We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it.

When husbands and fathers leave, their wives and daughters tend to value themselves less as a result.

I think we're creating a situation that's incredibly dangerous. There's a lot of chat at the moment about the war on terror and whilst there are many causes for acts of terrorism, what kind of society are you creating if you allow civil society in Africa to die and create millions upon millions of orphans? Where are they going to go? What kind of cults, what kind of militias, what's going to happen? The accession of violence in those countries, the possibility of that, to me is very terrifying.

Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos.

Children don't need much advice but they really do need to be listened to and not just with half an ear.