A Quote by Charles de Lint

It's all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are — © Charles de Lint
It's all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are
One of the things I find exciting about Joan of Arc is how clearly the story of her life reveals the creation of myth, a process in which every one of us is involved - every one of us who tells stories and all those who listen, each informing the other.
My parents separated when I was young, and as a result, my father had to learn how to braid our hair on the nights my sisters and I would stay with him. We would arrive to school the next morning with these incredibly endearing lopsided braids he had fashioned. This may have expedited the process of my learning how to braid my own hair.
The desire for story is very, very deep in human beings. We are the only creature in the world that does this; we are the only creature that tells stories, and sometimes those are true stories and sometimes those are made up stories. Then there are the larger stories, the grand narratives that we live in, which are things like nation and family and clan and so on. Those stories are considered to be treated reverentially. They need to be part of the way in which we conduct the discourse of our lives and to prevent people from doing something very damaging to human nature.
Do you realize that there is nothing in our genes that tells us when to die? There are genetic codes that tell us how to grow, how to breathe, and how to sleep, but NOTHING that tells us to die. So why do we? Because we literally rust and decay our bodies from the inside out with poor food and lifestyle choices.
Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.
How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.
Everything that I have is natural - braid, nails - I practically never use cosmetics. They often ask me in the provinces about my braid.
We don't only tell stories when we set out to tell stories, our memory tells us stories. That is, what we get to keep from our experiences is a story.
We live in a world where bad stories are told, stories that teach us life doesn't mean anything and that humanity has no great purpose. It's a good calling, then, to speak a better story. How brightly a better story shines. How easily the world looks to it in wonder. How grateful we are to hear these stories, and how happy it makes us to repeat them.
The son has always felt like he was a footnote in one of the stories the father tells. The father is an amazing storyteller and one of the tales that he tells is how he met his wife.
We are shaped by stories from the first moments of life, and even before. Stories tell us who we are, why we are here, and what will become of us. Whenever humans try to make sense of their experience, they create a story, and we use those stories to answer all the big questions of life. The stories come from everywhere--from family, church, school, and the culture at large. They so surround and inhabit us that we often don't recognize that they are stories at all, breathing them in and out as a fish breathes water.
We decided that how we react to and treat those fellow mortals, wild and domestic, tells us more about ourselves than, perhaps, some of us want to know.
I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.
How [stories] are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told — are really dependent on power.
There are stories we take on from our culture, and there are stories based on our own personal history. Some of those stories lock us in limiting beliefs and lead to suffering, and there are others that can move us toward freedom.
Optimization tells us precisely how to diversify the portfolio, whether I should have 12% in semiconductors or 4% in biotech, etc., and it literally tells me how to diversify not only the industry groups but the stocks.
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