Ariel may look a lot like Barbie, and her adventure may be limited to romance and over with the wedding bells, but unlike, say, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, she's active, brave and determined, the heroine of her own life. She even rescues the prince. And that makes her a rare fish, indeed, in the world of preschool culture.

The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength.

We are all the heroes and heroines of our own lives. Our love stories are amazingly romantic; our losses and betrayals and disappointments are gigantic in our own minds.

I don't want to be typecast as a heroine who does a certain kind of cinema, which is why I experiment with the types of films that I do. But yes, I won't deny that romantic love stories or romantic comedies are what I enjoy doing the most, because as an audience those are the kind of films that I like watching.

Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop.

I want to play a villain. I want to play a romantic heroine.

I feel that, historically, the Art Deco period has the most resonance for me. As a person, it has to be the plucky Clara Bow, the heroine of American silent movies of the 1920s. She embodied feminine dressing mixed with men's style. All this then evolved into the exquisite style and simplicity of Coco Chanel.

I like Hindi movies. Although my wife thinks the hero and heroine breaking into a song and dance every five minutes is ridiculous, but I find them entertaining.

You know the fairy-tale drill, especially from the Disney versions: the heroines endure awful stuff in rites of passage that lead to a joyous resolution of, usually, marriage to a prince. 'Into the Woods' follows that template, then asks, 'What happens after Happy Ever After?'

'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong.

Heaven knows, I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.

I love that Moana is a heroine, and I hope people take that away, and that you most certainly can be the heroine, or hero, of your own story.

I am always naturally drawn to heroines that have human flaws because I enjoy people that have lived their life with courage and make big successes and big failures.

Being sad and being depressed are two different things. Also, people going through depression don't look so, while someone sad will look sad. The most common reaction is, 'How can you be depressed? You have everything going for you. You are the supposed number one heroine and have a plush home, car, movies... What else do you want?'

I need a combination of attitude, sensuality, and vulnerability. I need a new kind of heroine. After Bipasha Basu and Sunny Leone, India now needs an even more unique fantasy figure.

I can't imagine a romance novel published today where the hero rapes the heroine and she falls in love with him.

Turn the page, your heroine is still there, breathe, relax, life is beautiful: you're in a book!

Well, it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths... The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy endings and all that... But the second kind, they show you life more like it is... The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up.

The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, 'I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God.

Philosophy without action is the ruin of the soul. One brave deed is worth a hundred books, a thousand theories, a million words. Now as always we need heroes. And heroines! Down with the passive and the limp.

When male authors write love stories, the heroine tends to end up dead.

The key element in tragedy is that heroes and heroines are destroyed by that which appears to be their greatest strength.

Heaven knows I've exposed myself in my novels through the use of fantasy and imagination... now my new book is about what really happened to me... not my heroines.