CHARLES DE LINT QUOTES II

Canadian writer (1951- )

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

CHARLES DE LINT

"Baiting the Hook", Memory and Dream

Tags: genius


It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Little Country

Tags: enemies


All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl


I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.

CHARLES DE LINT

"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013


When you're invisible, no one can see that you're different.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Pal o' Mine", The Ivory and the Horn


I was a misfit, but I think most teenagers feel that way. I don't care if you were a popular jock or the kid who spent his lunch hours in a stairwell reading a book, we all seem to have dealt with insecurities of one kind or another throughout our high school years.

CHARLES DE LINT

"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013

Tags: teenagers


I'm pretty much fixated on certain themes. Family, but it's family of choice as much as family of blood. Individuality, yes, but not at the cost of others' happiness. Be true to your friends. Remembering to find some wonder and hope in the world. Basically it boils down to: treat people like you'd like them to treat you, leave the world a little better than it was when you got here, respect others and stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves.

CHARLES DE LINT

"A Conversation With Charles de Lint", SFsite, 2000


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.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl

Tags: beauty


The moon likes secrets ... 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.

CHARLES DE LINT

Dreams Underfoot

Tags: moon


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.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Paperjack", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection

Tags: astrology


You can take the woman outta the trash, but you can't take the trash out a the woman.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl


Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you're about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of 'em.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl

Tags: stupidity


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

CHARLES DE LINT

Memory and Dream

Tags: change


To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.

CHARLES DE LINT

interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008


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.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn

Tags: reality


It's one of those inexplicable things. I remember stepping out of the airport the first time we came to Tucson (it must fifteen years or so ago, now) and I just felt like I was home. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I lived in desert country when I was a kid (Turkey, Lebanon, with lots of side trips through the Middle East and Egypt). Maybe it was from reading all those Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey westerns when I was a kid. Maybe it's because it was once a sea and we all came from there originally.

CHARLES DE LINT

interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008


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

CHARLES DE LINT

The Mystery of Grace

Tags: tattoos


I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

CHARLES DE LINT

interview, Challenging Destiny, Number 9


Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.

CHARLES DE LINT

"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn

Tags: fools


The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.

CHARLES DE LINT

"A Conversation With Charles de Lint", SFsite, 2000