Charles de Lint Quotes

89 Sourced Quotes

I don't know why I care what people write about me after I'm dead, except that since I invest so much of my time telling the truth in my fiction, I'd hate to see someone play fast and loose with the pieces of my life. I don't care what they might think of me; but I don't want lies about my life used to invalidate the stories. My characters seem real because they are drawn from the realities of my life. I didn't have to research their pain; I just tapped into my own.

Charles de Lint
They stood and listened, arms around each other for comfort, as the sound washed over them. It reverberated in the marrow of their bones, sung high and sweet, heartbreakingly mournful, quick as a jig, slow as the saddest air. Their hearts swelled with its beauty, its mystery. With all it revealed, and all that it hid.

Charles de Lint
The best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren't necessary.

Charles de Lint
We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.

Charles de Lint
The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.

Charles de Lint
There is no plan, no future laid out for any of us beyond what we make for ourselves.

Charles de Lint
I can't imagine it now, but I must've been innocent at some time in my life. A baby don't just get itself born bad, do it?

Charles de Lint
A body of work may be reviled — mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings — and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.

Charles de Lint
If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?

Charles de Lint
Most times we only see things for the way we are. But we're good at lying to ourselves. Sometimes we need somebody who's not living in our skin to point out how things really are.

Charles de Lint
As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.

Charles de Lint
What I want to do is travel deep and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.

Charles de Lint
When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.

Charles de Lint
Magic's never what you expect it to be, but it's often what you need.

Charles de Lint
Our time's the most precious thing we've got to offer folks, and the worst thing a body can do is to take it away from us.

Charles de Lint
It's not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that's important, but what its followers do with what they learn...

Charles de Lint
I hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled.

Charles de Lint
You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.

Charles de Lint
One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.

Charles de Lint
I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.

Charles de Lint
I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other.We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.

Charles de Lint
The faerie represent the beauty we don't see, or even choose to ignore. That's why I'll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important."- Jilly Coppercorn

Charles de Lint
I love this world … That is what rules my life. When I die, I want to have done all in my power to leave it in a better state than it was in when I found it. At the same time I know that this can never be. The world has grown so complex that one voice can do little to alter it any longer. That doesn't stop me from doing what I can but it makes the task hard. The successes are so small, the failures so large and many. It's like trying to stem a storm with one's bare hands.

Charles de Lint
Life's like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

Charles de Lint
You're confusing me.
But not deliberately so, Coyote says. Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.

Charles de Lint
He had seen trances before — wise men far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts.
But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.
Presences...

Charles de Lint
I've always had these bouts of depression; I hide them well but doesn't mean they aren't there. … I didn't have anyone around for whom I had to put on a cheerful mask. The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.

Charles de Lint
Legend and myth are what we use to describe what we don't comprehend. They are out attempts to make the impossible, possible — at least insofar as our spirits interact with the spirit of the world, or if that is too animistic for you, then let's use Jung's terminology and call it our racial subconscious. No matter the semantics, they are of a kind and it is legend and myth that binds us all together. … Through them, through their retellings, and through those version that are called religion while they are current, we are taught Truth and we attempt to understand Mystery.

Charles de Lint
It's not all about getting your own way. Sometimes there's a bigger picture.

Charles de Lint