Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.

The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul.

We''re all misfits here,” he says, almost proudly. “That's why I started this squat, after all. For people like us, who don't fit in anywhere else. Halfies and homos and hopeless romantics, the outcast and outrageous and terminally weird. That's where art comes from, Jimmy, my friend. From our weirdnesses and our differences, from our manic fixations, our obsessions, our passions. From all those wild and wacky things that make each of us unique.

What I find interesting about folklore is the dialogue it gives us with storytellers from centuries past.

We've always lived in dark times. There has always been a range of human experience from the sublime to the brutal, and stories reflect it. It's no less brutal now; each age has its horrors.

But for me, really, the written word is always stronger than film.

I'm an artist, I'm not an academic folklorist.