Charles de Lint Quotes

89 Sourced Quotes

How hard would it be to ask children what they see in their heads? How big should the house be in comparison to the family standing in front of it? What is it about the anatomy of the people that doesn't look right? Then let them try it again. Teach them to learn how to see and ask questions.

Charles de Lint
You can take the woman outta the trash, but you can't take the trash out a the woman.

Charles de Lint
You don't have to be Michelangelo to teach basic art, just as you don't have to be Shakespeare to be able to teach the correct use of language.

Charles de Lint
Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.

Charles de Lint
The old gods and their magics did not dwindle away into murky memories of brownies and little fairies more at home in a Disney cartoon; rather, they changed. The coming of Christ and Christians actually freed them. They were no longer bound to people's expectations but could now become anything that they could imagine themselves to be. They are still here, walking among us. We just don't recognize them anymore.

Charles de Lint
There's more to life than just surviving... but... sometimes just surviving is all you get

Charles de Lint
There's bad apples in whatever way you want to group people - doesn't matter if it's religious, political or social. The big mistake is generalizing.

Charles de Lint
The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.

Charles de Lint
As children, we come into the world with a natural desire to both speak and draw. Society makes sure that we learn language properly, right from the beginning, but art is treated as a gift of innate genius, something we either have or don't.

Charles de Lint
Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you're about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of 'em.

Charles de Lint
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.

Charles de Lint
We chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.

Charles de Lint
You're not a nun, are you? You haven't taken one of those absurd vows that cut you off from what otherwise might be a full and healthy human existence?

Charles de Lint
What I've got to talk about, I don't think a priest wants to hear. What does a priest know or care about secular concerns? All they want to talk about is God. All they want to hear is a tidy list of sins so that they can prescribe their penances and get on to the next customer.

Charles de Lint
When you're invisible, no one can see that you're different.

Charles de Lint
Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's the choices we make that define who we really are.

Charles de Lint
She hoped he was running to his red deer woman, and that when he tapped on the door of her heart, she'd open it wide and let him in.

Charles de Lint
Magic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.

Charles de Lint
I'm not as trusting as people think I am. Sure, I see the best in people, but that doesn't mean it's really there.

Charles de Lint
If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are.

Charles de Lint
We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.

Charles de Lint
The Lost Music was his way of talking about the way he believed that old wives' tales and dance tunes and folktales were just the tangled echoes of something that's not quite of this world … something we all knew once, but have forgotten since.

Charles de Lint
You can talk all you want about consensual reality, Jilly, but that doesn't change the fact that some things are real and some things aren't. There's a line drawn between the two that separates reality from fantasy.

Charles de Lint
Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?

Charles de Lint
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?

Charles de Lint
That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.

Charles de Lint
Ghosts were just a way that some stupid people dealt with their dull lives.

Charles de Lint
Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?

Charles de Lint
While you live … you have a duty to life. … The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. … Otherwise they fade away.

Charles de Lint
The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it's really a wheel.

Charles de Lint