Charles de Lint Quotations

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.

I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.

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

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.

Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.

Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.

Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors.

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

When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten.

The best artists know what to leave out.

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.

The few wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.

The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can.

It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.

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

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

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

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

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.

I've always known and been interested in people who are a little bit off the norm. I like to call attention to the idea that they are there, that they are real people, not invisible.

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

Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of.

I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.

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

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

It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

You've got to find yourself first. Everything else'll follow.

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.

I want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic.

Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused -- hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive. That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.

It was all cheese and applause.

There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.

There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.

I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.

It's easy to believe in magic when you're young. Anything you couldn't explain was magic then. It didn't matter if it was science or a fairy tale. Electricity and elves were both infinitely mysterious and equally possible - elves probably more so.

Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.

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.

It is so easy for your people to forget that everything has a spirit, that all are equal. That magic and mystery are a part of your lives, not something to store away in a child's bedroom, or to use as an escape from your lives.

There's never an easy route to the things that matter.

It's all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are

We call them faerie. We don't believe in them. Our loss.

I've always been aware of the otherworld, of spirits that exist in that twilight place that lies in the corner of our eyes, of fairie and stranger things still that we spy only when we're not really paying attention to them, whispers and flickering shadows, here one moment, gone the instant we turn our heads for a closer look. But I couldn't always find them. And when I did, for a long time I thought they were only this excess of imagination that I carry around inside me, that somehow it was leaking out of me into the world.

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.

Beauty isn't what you see on TV or in magazine ads or even necessarily in art galleries. It's a lot deeper and a lot simpler than that. It's realizing the goodness of things, it's leaving the world a little better than it was before you got here. It's appreciating the inspiration of the world around you and trying to inspire others.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

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

The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

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.

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

Look inside yourself for the answers - you're the only one who knows what's best for you. Everybody else is only guessing.

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.

I don't think the world is the way we like to think it is. I don't think it's one solid world, but many, thousands upon thousands of them--as many as there are people--because each person perceives the world in his or her own way; each lives in his or her own world. Sometimes they connect, for a moment, or more rarely, for a lifetime, but mostly we are alone, each living in our own world, suffering our small deaths.

Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.

The puppet thinks: It's not so much what they make me do as their hands inside me.

Can you remember how you felt when you were communicating through your artwork? Not just the sense of completion, but the sense of rightness- the sense that you had brought to life something that could live beyond your sphere of being, that held in it far more potential than you ever realized you were imbuing in the work?

I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone--I always have such a crowded head.

The stronger a woman gets, the more insecure the men in her life feel. It doesn’t work that way for a woman. We celebrate strength--in our partners as well as in ourselves.

Under the skin, intense fires burn.

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.

She knew this music--knew it down to the very core of her being--but she had never heard it before. Unfamiliar, it had still always been there inside her, waiting to be woken. It grew from the core of mystery that gives a secret its special delight, religion its awe. It demanded to be accepted by simple faith, not dissected or questioned, and at the same time, it begged to be doubted and probed.

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

Life's an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: 'If there's no magic, there's no meaning.' Without magic- or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom- nothing has any depth. It's all just surface. You know: what you see is what you get. I honestly believe there's more to everything than that, whether it's a Monet hanging in a gallery or some old vagrant sleeping in an alley.

Everything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you're dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself.

Wondering’s healthy. Broadens the mind. Opens you up to all sorts of stray thoughts and possibilities.

Children are the brightest treasures we bring forth into this world, but too large a percentage of the population continues to treat them as inconveniences and nuisances, when they're not treating them as possessions or toys.

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

The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.

I'm a writer and this is what I do no matter what name we put to it. Year by year, the world is turning into a darker and stranger place than any of us could want. This is the only thing I do that has potential to shine a little further than my immediate surroundings. For me, each story is a little candle held up to the dark of night, trying to illuminate the hope for a better world where we all respect and care for each other.

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.

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

... 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.

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.

I like living in the city where I have all my books and music and can go out to buy that night's dinner or easily see a band. But I also like the wild places, especially hiking in the desert and the Eastern woodlands. Do I have to choose?

Tattoos...are the stories in your heart, written on your skin.

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

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.

I always feel that there is a curtain, you know, that if I could just peek behind the curtain I'd see how the world really works. And since I haven't had it I have to write about it instead.

Write from the heart, what has meaning to you personally; have the patience and discipline to sit down and do it every day whether you're feeling inspired or not; never be afraid to take chances, in fact, make sure you take chances. As soon as you become complacent, you become boring ... . Read as much as possible, not simply in the genre, or what you think you're interested in, but other things as well.

The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music.

To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.

One cannot seek to uphold honor in a being that has none.

Books and music saved me as a teenager because it was through them that I realized that I wasn't alone in my obsessive love for words and music.

The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.

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.

All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom.

Fairy tales and mythology have always been an exaggerated distillation of the real world. Think of them as blueprints for how to deal with a multitude of situations that can arise in a person's life. The beauty of them is that their analogies resonate so deeply and they also entertain while they teach.

Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused.

It's not something you can prove....I know you hate to hear this, but you either have it, or you don't.

If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive and you won't consider what you're doing to it.

I'm pretty much fixated on certain themes. Family, but it's family of choice as much as family of blood. Individuality, yes, but not at the cost of others' happiness. Be true to your friends. Remembering to find some wonder and hope in the world. Basically it boils down to: treat people like you'd like them to treat you, leave the world a little better than it was when you got here, respect others and stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves.

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.

Compromise is necessary ... so long as you never give up who you are. That isn't compromise; that's spiritual death. You have to remain true to yourself.

It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.

What we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves.

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.

Well, while I didn't have the more extreme experiences of some of my characters, I didn't exactly come from the most normal of households. Or rather, it was normal, in that dysfunctional families appear to be the norm.