Home > Author > Charles de Lint
81 " 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 , Moonheart
82 " I realize that for all my penchant in believing that there's more to the world than what we can see, that folk tales and fairy tales are based on real, if forgotten events, I never accepted that part of it as being real. "
― Charles de Lint , The Onion Girl (Newford, #8)
83 " 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 , Waifs and Strays
84 " You've got to spread out as far as you can, cut down a whole forest, irrigate a whole desert, just to make sure that you won't accidentally stumble upon a place that's still in its natural state. "
― Charles de Lint , Someplace to Be Flying (Newford, #5)
85 " 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 , Widdershins (Newford #11)
86 " 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. "
87 " Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians—they’re the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker. It’s the intent you put into your work, the pride you take in it—whatever it is. "
― Charles de Lint , The Very Best of Charles de Lint
88 " 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 , The Blue Girl (Newford, #15)
89 " 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 , Newford Stories: Crow Girls
90 " The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place. "
91 " 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 , Forests of the Heart (Newford, #7)
92 " living in an environment I can't control doesn't scare me. I'm partial to the surprises. "
93 " 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 , Dreams Underfoot (Newford, #1)
94 " They have alls these laws and social boundaries to keep the worst of them in check. The problem is, villains and bullies just ignore that kind of thing. "
― Charles de Lint , Little (Grrl) Lost (Newford, #16)
95 " There's no such thing as fiction", Annie told him once. "If you can imagine something, then it's happened. "
96 " 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. "
97 " The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. "
98 " Though the three of them were unrelated by blood, they were sisters all the same. In the heart, where it mattered. "
99 " 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. "
100 " 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. "