Top 196 Quotes & Sayings by Charles de Lint

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The best artists know what to leave out.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I've always been interested in the outsider.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

But what the evil people do, that's their responsibility. The burden they have to carry. Sure, when we see 'em starting on causing some hurt, we've got to try and stop 'em, but mostly what the rest of us should be concerning ourselves with is doing right by others. Every time you do a good turn, you shine the light a little further into the dark. And the thing is, even when we're gone, that light's going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.

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

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.

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.

The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it's really a wheel.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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'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.

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.

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

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.