Charles De Lint Quotes & Sayings

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

Sara Kendell once read somewhere that the tale of the world is like a tree. The tale, she understood, did not so much mean the niggling occurrences of daily life. Rather it encompassed the grand stories that caused some change in the world and were remembered in ensuing years as, if not histories, at least folktales and myths. By such reasoning, Winston Churchill could take his place in British folklore alongside the legendary Robin Hood; Merlin Ambrosius had as much validity as Martin Luther. The scope of their influence might differ, but they were all a part of the same tale. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

The real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place. — Charles De Lint

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

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. — Charles De Lint

Once upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell. — Charles De Lint

I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets. — Charles De Lint

If you cherish something enough", she told me, "it doesn't matter how old or worn or useless it's become; your caring for it immediately raises its value in somebody else's eyes. It's just like rehab- a body's got to believe in their own worth before anybody can start fixing them, but most people need someone to believe in them before they can start believing in themselves. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

Well, you know this world isn't perfect.' 'No, you're wrong. This world IS perfect, people just come along and mess it up sometimes. — Charles De Lint

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

It seems like I always wrote, I just didn't think of it as a career choice. I just liked to tell stories ... to myself, to pen pals (I had a lot of them, all over the world). Of course this was in the days before computers were everywhere, and anyone could access the Web. You had to make an effort keeping up a correspondence, and the arrival of the mail once a day was a big deal. I think if modern technology had been around when I was a kid, I would never have left my bedroom except to take the dogs out for their run three times a day. — Charles De Lint

Yes, no. I don't know. It's all so confusing. I'm just a kid."
Abuelo smiled. "You kept saying that while you told me your story, but what does it mean?"
"That I'm too young to have to be making decisions like this."
"You're never too young to do the right thing," Abuelo said. — Charles De Lint

There's something wrong inside of me," she said. "I don't know at it is. It feels big and heavy and sometimes it makes it hard to breathe." She lifted her hands eyes. "And tears keep leaking out of my eyes. Is this what sadness feels like?" "That's what it feels like for me." I replied. "It's funny. I've heard about it in a lot of the stories I've collected, but I never knew it felt like this before." She sighed "it's so heavy......"
"I know." I replied "I know. — 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

You know how we'd get along better? If everybody'd just remember how we're all related. White, black, Asian, skin. No difference. All the bloodlines go back to that one old mama in Africa. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

We are wise women," Abuela liked to say. "Not because we are wise, but because we seek wisdom. — Charles De Lint

I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them. — Charles De Lint

I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times. — Charles De Lint

Faerie music is the wind", he says, "and their movement is the play of shadow cast by moonlight, or starlight, or no light at all. Faerie lives like a ghost beside us, but only the city remembers. But then the city never forgets anything. — Charles De Lint

She shrugged. Everybody makes the same mistake. Fortune-telling doesn't reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so that you can get a good look at it. — Charles De Lint

He's this Goth dude, can control people." "Goth, like a Visigoth German Viking of the middle ages, or a Neil Gaiman-looking, Robert Smith, make-up-and-moonbeams Cure fan?" "What's a Neil Gaiman?" "You're an idiot. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

Everybody has a soul." I turn to Pelly. "And that means you, too."
"I'm not so sure of that," he says. "What does it feel like?"
"Having a soul?" I look at Maxine, but she only shrugs. "I don't know," I tell Pelly. "I don't have anything to compare it to- you know, what not having a sould would feel like."
We fall into a kind of awkward silence. I don't know about the others, but I'm working on what a soul is and not coming up with a whole lot. I mean, I just always thought of it as me- what I feel like being me. But surely Pelly feels like himself, so that means he's got a soul right? But if that's not your soul, then what is?
It's weird and not something you really think about, is it? — 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

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

I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything. — Charles De Lint

The lonesome dark.
That's what Jack called a night like this. When you were distanced from everything and everybody. Out on your own and there was nobody to care if you were happy or sad. If you lived or died.
The lonesome dark hadn't existed in the old days. That was something people invented. Like time. Parcel up the days, parcel up the seasons. Add a minute here, a day there when it doesn't quite fit. Trim the square peg so that you could slide it into the round hole. In the old days the night was as open as the day. It wasn't a better place to hide because there was nothing to hide from. You weren't outside because there was no in. — Charles De Lint

I knew it wasn't simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame that was mine at that time in my life. There was a knowledge that ran deeper--an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access--telling me that by crossing over, I'd be coming home. — Charles De Lint

If everybody really and truly treated each other the way they'd want to be treated, all the problems of the world would be solved. Nobody would starve, because nobody'd want to go hungry themselves. Nobody would steal, or kill, or hurt each other, because they wouldn't want that to happen to themselves. — Charles De Lint

Tattoos ... are the stories in your heart, written on your skin. — Charles De Lint

An now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year ... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled. — Charles De Lint

Our lives are stories, and the stories we have to give to each other are the most important. No one has a story too small and all are of equal stature. We each tell them in different ways, through different mediums - and if we care about each other, we'll take the time to listen. — Charles De Lint

I don't know what's waiting for us when we die
something better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet. — Charles De Lint

The moon likes secrets," Meran said. "And secret things. She lets mysteries bleed into her shadows and leaves us to ask whether they originated from otherworlds, or from our own imaginations. — Charles De Lint

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

Inside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be. — 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

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. — Charles De Lint

There isn't a single day I don't do some writing
if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead
answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me. — Charles De Lint

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. — 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

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. — Charles De Lint

It's my diary", she'd explained. "Every mark I've had drawn on my skin connects me to where and who I've been- so I never forget who I am and how I got here."There was humour in the smile she offered him. "And you know what the real beauty of it is?"
Hank had shaken his head.
"Nobody can take it away. — Charles De Lint

I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there's no excuse for that. It's not something I'll let happen to me again. — Charles De Lint

Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are. — Charles De Lint

You must always confront your fears," Goon said as though she hadn't spoken. "Then skulking monsters become merely unfamiliar shadows, thrown by a tree bough. Whispering voices are just the wind. The wild flare of panic is merely a burst of emotion, not a terror spell cast by some evil witch. — Charles De Lint

" ... he had understood, better than anyone ... the beauty that grew out of the simple knowledge that everything, no matter how small or large it might be, was a perfect example of what it was." — Charles De Lint

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

That's the thing about magic; you've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs. — Charles De Lint

If all the darkness each of us carries within us, all our angers and unhappiness and bad moments were pulled out of us and given shape, we would all create monsters. — Charles De Lint

Fortune-telling doesn't reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so you can get a good look at it. — Charles De Lint

There's nothing wrong with a youthful prospective. Don't forget- no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories you have to tell. — 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

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

Music's the soundtrack of my life and has been since I was a teenager. There's always music. If I'm not playing it, I'm listening to it. With my writing ... sometimes it inspires a story, sometimes it highlights something I'm working on, sometimes it simply helps me stay in the narrative mood. — 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

My theory about writing is that one should write books you'd like to read, but no one else has written yet. So, as long as I stick with that, I'm entertaining myself, and then hopefully my readers as well. I hope to god I realize that I'm repeating myself, if I ever do. But if I don't, I'm sure my readers will let me know. — Charles De Lint

There were two forests for every one you entered. There was the one you walked in, the physical echo, and then there was the one that was connected to all the other forests, with no consideration of distance, or time. The forest primeval, remembered through the collective memory of every tree in the same way that people remembered myth- through the collective subconscious that Jung mapped, the shared mythic resonance that lay buried in every human mind. Legend and myth, all tangled in an alphabet of trees remembered, not always with understanding, but with wonder. With awe. — Charles De Lint

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

But that's what we all are-just stories. We only exist by how people remember us, by the stories we make of our lives. Without the stories, we'd just fade away. — Charles De Lint

I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do. — Charles De Lint

[She] had felt straight away that she wasn't meeting a new friend, but recognizing an old one. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

There was nothing wrong with being a homebody. There was nothing wrong with not wanting - not needing - the constant jostle and noise of a party or bar or... whatever. — Charles De Lint

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. — Charles De Lint

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

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

From the first time he'd met her, he'd sensed an air of contradiction about her. She was very much a woman, but still retained a waiflike quality. She could be brash, and at times deliberately suggestive, yet she was painfully shy. She was incredibly easy to get along with, yet she had few friends. She was a talented artist in her own right, but so self-conscious about her work that she rarely completed a piece and preferred to work with other people's art and ideas ... — Charles De Lint

I read and write for character. If I like and can relate to the characters in a story I can enjoy any kind of story. I also want something with a definitive plot - you know, beginning, middle and end--that has forward motion. I don't like series books that leave you hanging after you've finished a book and in my own fiction I try to make sure that there's always an entry point for those who are new to the book as well as long-time readers. — Charles De Lint

Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand. — Charles De Lint

What if time's not linear, the way people think it is? What if the past, present and future are all going on at the same time, only they're separated by- oh, I don't know- a kind of gauze or something. And maybe there are people that can see through that gauze. — Charles De Lint

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

The real difference is that with fantasy - and by that I mean fantasy which can simultaneously tap into a cosmopolitan commonality at the same time as it springs from an individual and unique perspective. In this sort of fantasy, a mythic resonance lingers on - an harmonious vibration that builds in potency the longer one considers it, rather than fading away when the final page is read and the book is put away. Characters discovered in such writing are pulled from our own inner landscapes... and then set out upon the stories' various stages so that as we learn to understand them a little better, both the monsters and the angels, we come to understand ourselves a little better as well. — Charles De Lint

People didn't realize it, but they needed myths to survive, just as much now as when their forebears were alive. Perhaps more. Mythology embodied the world's dreams, helped to make sense of the great human problems. Just as the dreams of individuals exist to give subconscious support to their conscious lives, so do myths serve as society's dreams. They uncover the dark, hidden places where mysteries dwell and can turn to nightmare if left untended. They make sense of injustice in archetypal terms. They give men and women a blueprint for how they may respond to success or failure, tragedy or joy. — Charles De Lint

I can't think of a better rationale to create a work of art. I don't care what form one's art takes, it has to be an attempt to leave the world a better place than it was before we got here or it's not doing its job. And I don't mean just making things that are pretty. — 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

Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference. — 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

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. — 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

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

It is important to know what a person was. But it's more important to know what they are now. — Charles De Lint

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

As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed. — Charles De Lint

The best artists know what to leave out. — Charles De Lint

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

He had too much cat in his blood - a deep-rooted feline twitch that would travel the length of his nerves to tickle his mind at the faintest sign of a mystery, no matter how small. He could no more let a riddle go unsolved than he could pass by the perfect length of colourful wire without picking it up. — Charles De Lint

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

You hear this kind of thing, rednecks and their guys and--"
"Don't call them that," I say. "They're just assholes. Most people you run into around here...well, maybe they won't like the length of your hair, but they'll keep their feelings to themselves. — Charles De Lint