Here is novelist and Booker Prize winner A.S. Byatt on why she uses fairy tales in her novels: "...realist narrative alone is not a perfect way of describing the world, or of telling stories, or of using language. Fairytales are ancient forms of talking about humans in the world and can express our sense of destiny, or doom, or being trapped, or strangeness, or metaphor..." Another author, Clarissa Estes, has perhaps done more than any other contemporary person to make us aware of the the importance of fairy tales in understanding our own psyches, but few of us draw on this loaded heritage in our writing. Something to think about.