I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library and it's better than college. People should educate themselves - you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.

Gradually it occurred to me that we spend a great deal of life asleep and that dreams are little narratives little stories. I thought 'Who's choreographing this stuff?'

I try to help people realize their dreams by using magic to tell stories that educate move and inspire.

Somehow knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories to think through certain issues as only a novel can do to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.

Movies like that aren't about the visual effects and explosions. They're human stories about family about life about death.

All stories interest me and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice loyalty violence death political and social issues freedom.

Madame all stories if continued far enough end in death and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

I have mostly been terrified of listening to scary stories around a campfire. We camp a lot as a family and at night my dad would try and tell us scary stories. This made eating s'mores difficult. The story would start with something like... 'and the old man who lived in these woods...' I would then run back into the camper terrified.

My dad and grandpa were in the army and as a country singer you're constantly playing at military bases all across the country and meeting soldiers and their families and hearing their stories.

I didn't want to travel. I didn't want to leave my family. I heard all these stories from Dad about not having Edward around when he was young and I didn't want that to happen.