Charles de Lint Quotes

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

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.

What do they say about meeting a bear in the woods? Oh right, you shouldn't. And to make sure you don't, you should make a lot of noise so that they'll will know where you are and keep their distance because, supposedly, they're as nervous of us as we are of them. Which is all goo, except this bear doesn't seem the least bit nervous. He's giving me a look like I'm Goldilocks, ate his porridge, broke his chair, slept in his bed, and now it's payback time."- Widdershins

Gina always believed there was magic in the world. "But it doesn't work in the way it does in fairy tales," she told me. "It doesn't save us. We have to save ourselves.

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.

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.

T.H. moved through the forest like the melody of a well-known song, in perfect harmony with his surroundings.

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.