"For me, the biggest gift that Alice has given me, and perhaps to many others, is in the clue of shrinking: it’s a portal to our child within." Helena Bonham Carter

Helena Bonham Carter on the magic and influence of Alice in Wonderland 

"(...) Since then, I’ve pillaged and borrowed and stolen all things Alice, and woven and imported them somehow into my life. Now I come to think of it, everywhere I look at home, every view has some reference to Alice: frog footman candlesticks, teacup constructions, a teapot lamp, a chessboard teapot, an oversized pocket watch, undersized doors, bunnies, internal windows that look like mirrors, and mirrors that look like windows. In the summer, I bring the indoor furniture outside. The landing has a shopfront that started life outdoors and is now the entrance to the loo. My home is an example of topsy-turvy living, and a labyrinth with many, many doors. There are so many doors... not many visitors leave without assistance."

 

 

"And I’ve dressed up time and time again in Wonderland guises (mostly as the Mad Hatter). I have more top hats than are strictly necessary, waistcoats, tailcoats, blue and white striped stockings, bunny ears... and this is not a complete inventory."

 

"I think this is the secret to Carroll’s potency. He acknowledges the madness – and the irrational, and I’m sorry (I’m no academic), but isn’t it remarkable that he invents, or discovers, the unconscious, about 30 years before Freud did? And is a surrealist more than 50 years before Dalí? He is radical. Carroll is cool."

SOURCE OF THE TEXT: harpersbazaar