Classic Tales Quotes

As much as I love elements of Spider-Man's past, I don't really want to go back in and retell the Gwen Stacy and Green Goblin story in animation just so I can do my take on it. I don't want to redo the first 'Spider Slayer' story.

From time to time there is a move to do a little less in the way of period dramas, but people rebel. Audiences say we want them. There is a big hunger for them. I don't think it's sentimentality or nostalgia, it's often that they are simply the best stories.

Shakespeare does a great job of taking 5,000-year-old stories and turning them into modern pieces that are true to the original essence but are completely remade.

I go back to read 'Tarzan' books every now and again or 'John Carter,' and you realize Edgar Rice Burroughs is not a great writer by any means. But he was a great storyteller. You wanted to see what happened next.

I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.

Stories always seem to get better with age.

One of the very first ghost stories I read - and that was in a forest rest house, where it is a bit scarier - was by M.R. James. He is one of the pioneers of ghost stories. And the book was called 'Ghost Stories Of An Antiquary.'

Most of the books I remember from my childhood were Dr. Seuss-type books. They were fun to read, but there wasn't a real story behind them.

It's always a challenge bringing a great story classic to the screen. Giving visual form to the characters and places that have only existed in the imagination. But it's the kind of challenge we enjoy.

When I was very small, I loved 'Meg And Mog' by Helen Nicoll and Jan Pienkowski. I had all the books and remember going to see the theatre production.

You want to make money, remake 'Cinderella.' You want to move people, remake the Hippolytus and Phaedra myth.

Many of the books I loved as a kid, that even my mother read as a child, are very slow going. Today's children are not as patient. The best example of this is 'The Secret Garden,' which I adored as a child.

In kindergarten that used to be my job, to tell them fairytales. I liked Hans Christian Andersen, and the Grimm fairy tales, all the classic fairy tales.

All the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark.

Christmas was always a big holiday in our family. Every Christmas Eve before we'd go to bed, my mom and dad would read to us two or three stories and they would always be 'The Happy Prince,' 'The Gift of the Magi' and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas,' and I would like to keep that alive.

I think everyone is introduced to the Peter Pan story when they're very young. Everyone has read the book and watched the Disney film and all that.

A good book written for children can be read by adults.

Go out and find a copy of 'The Shrinking Of Treehorn' and its sequel, 'Treehorn's Treasure.' Written by Florence Parry Heide and illustrated by the great Edward Gorey, master of the gothic and the macabre, these books are small masterpieces.

How many people want to read about three disreputable pigs and a dopey wolf with a disposition towards house demolition?

I love Sherlock Holmes, but I love any of these old stories where the writer was paid by the word, so the adventures just continue forever. They are almost like they were meant to be read out loud.

There are a lot of wrong reasons to do a remake, but there are some good ones... I think it's human nature, in many ways, to retell our favorite stories. We do it in the theater, all the time. I've seen four different 'Hamlets,' and every one has given me something different.

I was a youngish man entering fatherhood when we wrote 'Woods,' a patchwork of classic fairy tales with an original tale sewn in. I had dedicated my libretto to my baby daughter.

To tell the truth, fairytales have never gone out of style. They have been told and retold for thousands of years, finding new shapes and structures with each new generation of tellers.

People who know various movie versions don't really know the story.

When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.