Canadian writer (1951- )
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
"Music and Myth: A Conversation with Charles de Lint", The Internet Review of Science Fiction
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
The Little Country
Everything is the way it is because we've all agreed that's the way it is.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
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
interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Memory and Dream
I believe in a different kind of magic. The kind we make between each other.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Forest is Crying", The Ivory and the Horn
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
Greenmantle
Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of -- heightened nightsight, an empathy shared with the beasts, a utilization of the more obscure abilities of our minds. Nothing that science can't explain away. Wizardry is spells and enchantments. Fairy tales.
CHARLES DE LINT
Into the Green
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
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 of Wind and Shadow", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
Living on the street as a kid changed the way I looked at everything. It was a different time and while it had its dangers, it was nothing like it would be today. It was the Summer of Love and there was a real sense of community among us. We were hippies who looked out for each other instead of trying to rip each other off. We only had to watch out for the police who liked to roust us just on general principles, and the kids who came in from the suburbs to do a little hippie-bashing.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
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
The Little Country
Magic's never what you expect it to be, but it's often what you need.
CHARLES DE LINT
Moonlight and Vines
You back down and they're gonna walk all over you. Not just today, but every goddamn day.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Romano Drom", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot
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
Dreams Underfoot
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
"Saxophone Joe and the Woman in Black", The Ivory and the Horn
I'd say that any character or setting can be given a bit of an otherworldly sheen and be the better for it. The one thing I insist on with my own writing is that I won't let magic solve my characters' real world problems. The solutions have to come from the characters themselves.
CHARLES DE LINT
interview, Fairy Room, February 27, 2013