368 Quotes by Charles de Lint

Not only do we all have magic, it’s all around us as well. We just don’t pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that’s an act of magic. It doesn’t matter if it’s a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that’s broken, whether it’s a car engine or a broken heart, that’s an act of magic.

Kindness is important, my little wren,” he would tell her. “Doesn’t matter how poor you are, you can still be kind.

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

I wouldn’t like to live in a world where everything’s as cut-and-dried as most people think it is.

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. It’s the intent you put into your work, the pride you take in it – whatever it is.

You lose your pride and you lose everything. We don’t want to know the stories, because we don’t want to remember. But we’ve got to take the good with the bad and make ourselves whole again, be proud again. A proud people can never be defeated. They lose battles, but they’ll never lose the war, because for them to lose the war you’ve got to go out and kill each and every one of them, everybody with even a drop of the blood. And even then, the stories will go on.

We’re all beings of power. Some of us are strong, some weak. Every mistake that we learn something from, makes us stronger. As does every sacrifice, every good deed. That’s how we learn. Our power is the sum of all we have been and all we are. When you take responsibility for somebody else’s decisions, or actions, you take away their power. And when you take away somebody’s power, you leave them spinning wheels when they could be moving forward.

The more she tried to recapture the impulse that had set her wanting to put pen to paper, the less it seemed to have ever existed in the first place.

I don’t know what’s waiting for us when we die – something better, something worse. I only know I’m not ready to find out yet.