Charles de Lint

“The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can.”

“When you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.”

“I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.”

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

“I suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other.We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.”

“As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary.”

“There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.”

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.”

“Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of.”

“Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors.”

“I've always known and been interested in people who are a little bit off the norm. I like to call attention to the idea that they are there, that they are real people, not invisible.”

“Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?”

“Not everything has to mean something. Some things just are.”

“Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”

“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.”

“The problem with children is that you have to put up with their parents.”

“Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.”

“When all's said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it's not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”

“The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.”

“If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?”