Usually, the fairy tale ends with the girl marrying the prince. But mine started as soon as the marriage was over.

In the fairy tale you mentioned last night, I would probably be the villain. But it's possible the villain would treat you far better than the prince would have.

The thing about fairy tales is that the princess finds her prince, but there's generally a price to pay. A compromise of some kind is required for happily ever after. The woman in the fairy tale is generally the one who pays the price, which is such a rotten deal. This seems to be the nature of sacrifice in most matters.

Many myths and fairy tales tell of a prince, who has been turned into an animal or a monster by sorcery, being saved by a woman. This is a symbolic representation of the development of the animus toward consciousness. Often the heroine may ask no questions of her mysterious lover, or she is only allowed to meet him in darkness. She is to save him through her blind faith and love, but this never works. She always breaks her promise and is only able to find her beloved again after a long quest.

It is perhaps not an accident that stories often end with a marriage, since this provides a specifically dramatic conclusion that serves to gather together the infinite opposition of personalities into a single form. The fact that those who marry in so many traditional fairy tales disappear from the narrative into an implicit "happily ever after" perhaps betrays a sense deeply rooted in human culture that freedom and form belong together.

When I was a little girl I used to read fairy tales. In fairy tales you meet Prince Charming and he's everything you ever wanted. In fairy tales the bad guy is very easy to spot. The bad guy is always wearing a black cape so you always know who he is. Then you grow up and you realize that Prince Charming is not as easy to find as you thought. You realize the bad guy is not wearing a black cape and he's not easy to spot; he's really funny, and he makes you laugh, and he has perfect hair.

The prince clears his throat and then says, ‘Fair princess, I will do whatever I can to break the curse that turns you into . . . that thing.’

‘That thing, as you call it,’ the princess says, ‘is the magical part of me. I love being the dragon and the dragon loves me.’

The princess raises an eyebrow. ‘I will love me this way. And I never said I was in want of being someone’s wife.’

‘But if not a wife, you will die an old maid,’ he presses on.

‘I am half dragon, who told you I will ever die at all?

The wise old fairy tales never were so silly as to say that the prince and the princess lived peacefully ever afterwards. The fairy tales said that the prince and princess lived happily ever afterwards; and so they did. They lived happily, although it is very likely that from time to time they threw the furniture at each other.

He was the most ordinary man in all the world, and yet in her memory he'd become luminous, like the prince in a fairy tale.

I'd like to be a fairy princess — a little golden doll with gossamer wings, in a voile dress, adorned with bright, shiny things. I see that as something totally pure and beautiful. Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. I'm very sensitive to ugly situations. I'm quick to read people, and I pick up if someone's reacting to me as just a sexy blonde. At times like that, I freeze. I can be very alone at a party, on the set, or in general, if I'm not in harmony with things around me.

"She moaned into her pillow. "Go away. I feel like dying."
"No fair maiden should die alone," he said, putting a hand on hers. "Shall I read to you in your final moments? What story would you like?"
She snatched her hand back. "How about the story of the idiotic prince who won't leave the assassin alone?"
"Oh! I love that story! It has such a happy ending, too — why, the assassin was really feigning her illness in order to get the prince's attention! Who would have guessed it? Such a clever girl. And the bedroom scene is so lovely — it's worth reading through all of their ceaseless banter!

Some fairy tales have happy endings. Some don't. I think we've all read the Grimms' fairy tales, which are, indeed, very grim. But the world isn't a fairy tale, and it could be more brutal than we want to acknowledge. Equally, it could be better than we've been led to believe, but either way, we have to start seeing it exactly as it is, with all of its problems, because it's only by seeing it with all of its problems that we'll be able to fix them and live in a world in which we can all be happily ever after.

"But could you not be mended?" asked the girl. "Oh, yes; but one is never so pretty after being mended, you know," replied the Princess.

"The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet, you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.
"You're like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."