Charles De Lint Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Fortune-telling doesn't reveal the future; it mirrors the present. It resonates against what your subconscious already knows and hauls it up out of the darkness so you can get a good look at it.

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.

There's bad apples in whatever way you want to group people - doesn't matter if it's religious, political or social. The big mistake is generalizing.

Magic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.

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.

What I want to do is travel deep and deeper into the dreamlands, to find that place that I know is waiting for me here. My home.

There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.

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.

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

There's more to life than just surviving . . . but . . . sometimes just surviving is all you get

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

We call them faerie. We don't believe in them. Our loss.

Look inside yourself for the answers - you're the only one who knows what's best for you. Everybody else is only guessing.

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

Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive and you won't consider what you're doing to it.

That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.

I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.

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

There's never an easy route to the things that matter.

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.

The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them.

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

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

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

Books and music saved me as a teenager because it was through them that I realized that I wasn't alone in my obsessive love for words and music.

The best artists know what to leave out.

Tattoos...are the stories in your heart, written on your skin.

You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.

Most times we only see things for the way we are. But we're good at lying to ourselves. Sometimes we need somebody who's not living in our skin to point out how things really are.

Magic's never what you expect it to be, but it's often what you need.

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 best artists know what to leave out. They know how much of the support should show through as the pigment is applied, what details aren't necessary.

Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?

Everybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's the choices we make that define who we really are.

We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on.

You know how we'd get along better? If everybody'd just remember how we're all related. White, black, Asian, skin. No difference. All the bloodlines go back to that one old mama in Africa.

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

Only fools think they're wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.

I hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled.

You wouldn't want any creative process to lose its sense of fun and adventure, but that doesn't mean you can't take it seriously as well.

You don't have to be Michelangelo to teach basic art, just as you don't have to be Shakespeare to be able to teach the correct use of language.