"Carter’s sensual, erotic retellings of fairy tales and folk tales blend Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and Beauty (of “Beauty and the Beast”) into shape-shifting creations that are Carter’s own. A girl attacked by a wolf can love the wolf or even become a wolf herself; the beauty can be beastly, too."

"I was obsessed with the mysterious as a child – UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts – anything weird or spooky. The book is a controversial idea to say the least: that aliens came down from a secret planet in our solar system and started messing around with the genetics of pre-human monkey-folk and building pyramids."

"A collection of magical, supernatural Japanese folk tales, first recommended to me by a well-traveled and well-read friend, this collection has a special significance as a four line footnote from this book about a young boy training to be a samurai inspired the screenplay of my first feature film, “The Warrior.”"