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.

We’re all misfits herefrom 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.

In more recent years, I've become more and more fascinated with the indigenous folklore of this land, Native American folklore, and also Hispanic folklore now that I live in the Southwest.

I'm also looking for gems that the average reader might have missed.

Happiness is a talent like any other. It's another art form. Some people are good at it, some people aren't.

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.

I'd had no particular interest in the Southwest at all as a young girl, and I was completely surprised that the desert stole my heart to the extent it did.

Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.

There are plenty of bad editors who try to impose their own vision on a book. (…) A good novel editor is invisible.

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

This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.

Ruined land was accepted as the collateral damage of progress.

Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops.

I don't want to think my life as a career.

Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions.

We can get so wrapped up in our own misconceptions that we miss the simple beauty of the truth.

May I hold myself in compassion. May I meet the suffering and ignorance of others with compassion.

I went in the Marines when I was 16. I spent four and a half years in the Marines and then came right to New York to be an actor. And then seven years later, I got my first job.

You can get through everything and cast a laugh and sing/you can do anything that you want to.

Man is the jewel of God, who has created this material world to keep his treasure in.