368 Quotes by Charles de Lint

There are as many stories to be told as there are people to tell them about; only the mean-spirited would consider there to be a competition at all.

Under the skin, intense fires burn.

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 the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.

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.

The trouble with advice is that it's usually something you don't want to hear.

I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone--I always have such a crowded head.

But that's what we all are-just stories. We only exist by how people remember us, by the stories we make of our lives. Without the stories, we'd just fade away.

The puppet thinks: It's not so much what they make me do as their hands inside me.

An now the silences come in a single lifetime, in a single year... when species die, leaving a silent space in the world song that can never be filled.