Disney is a huge presence when it comes to fairy tales because he’s made of them such brilliant artifacts in terms of movie-making. But it’s very hard to ignore what he’s done to them. I'm not interested in denigrating Disney or even commenting on him very much. I'm more interested in seeing what I can do with the stories myself.

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel.

My only real claim to anyone's attention lies in my writing

Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason.

There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.

Everything means something.

Lonely? I don't know. They tell me this is cold. I don't know what cold is, because I don't freeze. So I don't know what lonely means either. Bears are made to be solitary.