Charles de Lint Mean Quotations

The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.

Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are.

There are as many stories to be told as there are people to tell them about; only the mean-spirited would consider there to be a competition at all.

Labels don't mean much to me one way or another -- except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work -- one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for.

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.

All forests have their own personality. I don't just mean the obvious differences, like how an English woodland is different from a Central American rain forest, or comparing tracts of West Coast redwoods to the saguaro forests of the American Southwest... they each have their own gossip, their own sound, their own rustling whispers and smells. A voice speaks up when you enter their acres that can't be mistaken for one you'd hear anyplace else, a voice true to those particular tress, individual rather than of their species.

You wouldn't want any creative process to lose its sense of fun and adventure, but that doesn't mean you can't take it seriously as well.