Quotes from Charles de Lint

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

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

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

Stone walls confine a tinker; cold iron binds a witch; but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

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

The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.

The moon likes secrets," Meran said. "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.

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.

Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.

We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.

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.

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

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

There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.

You've got to find yourself first. Everything else'll follow.

The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.

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 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.

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.

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

Ghosts were just a way that some stupid people dealt with their dull lives.

My characters seem real because they are drawn from the realities of my life. I didn't have to research their pain; I just tapped into my own.

I can't imagine it now, but I must've been innocent at some time in my life. A baby don't just get itself born bad, do it?

I was going through the motions of life, instead of really living, and there's no excuse for that. It's not something I'll let happen to me again.