368 Quotes by Charles de Lint

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

I like living in the city where I have all my books and music and can go out to buy that night’s dinner or easily see a band. But I also like the wild places, especially hiking in the desert and the Eastern woodlands. Do I have to choose?

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

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.

Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of – heightened nightsight, an empathy shared with the beasts, a utilization of the more obscure abilities of our minds. Nothing that science can’t explain away. Wizardry is spells and enchantments. Fairy tales.

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

It’s not the work or the personality of the founder of a religion that’s important, but what its followers do with what they learn.

The past scampers like an alleycat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter – here ink is smeared on a page, there lies an old photograph with a chewed corner, elsewhere still, a nest has been made of old newspapers, the headlines running one into the other to make strange declarations.

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.