Canadian writer (1951- )
I've always believed the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Journal Entries", Memory and Dream
I believe a good writer can write a good book with any sort of character, in any sort of setting, but I prefer to write about the outsider. It might just be because I've been one (or perceived myself to be one) for so much of my life. But the simple fact of being marginalized immediately brings conflict to a story before the narrative even begins, and that's gold for a writer because it means that your character already has depth before events begin to unfold.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.
CHARLES DE LINT
Yarrow: An Autumn Tale
I believe in a different kind of magic. The kind we make between each other.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
Compromise is necessary ... so long as you never give up who you are. That isn't compromise; that's spiritual death. You have to remain true to yourself.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn
Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Forest is Crying", The Ivory and the Horn
I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Music and Myth: A Conversation with Charles de Lint", The Internet Review of Science Fiction
As the new work fills my notebooks, I've come to realize that the characters in my stories were so real because I really did want to get close to people, I really did want to know them. It was just easier to do it on paper, one step removed.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Journal Entries", Memory and Dream
Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?
CHARLES DE LINT
"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Into the Green
It's the questions we ask, the journey we take to get to where we are going that is more important than the actual answer.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Paperjack", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Greenmantle
Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
There isn't a single day I don't do some writing -- if you don't, you won't have a book. When you're self-employed it is very easy to burn away your time instead -- answering e-mails, surfing the Internet, or hanging out with friends. You really must have the discipline to sit down and write every day. Most of what I am writing is living in the back of my head or in my subconscious. I find if I write every day, my subconscious will do the job for me.
CHARLES DE LINT
Locus Magazine, June 2003
Life's like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Pochade Box", The Ivory and the Horn
The trouble with advice is that it's usually something you don't want to hear.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Memory and Dream
I write on a computer, but I've run the complete gambit. When I was very young, I wrote with a ballpoint pen in school notebooks. Then I got pretentious and started writing with a dip pen on parchment (I wrote at least a novel-length poem that way). Moved on to a fountain pen. Then a typewriter, then an electric self-correct. Then someone gave me a word processor and I was amazed at being able to fit ten pages on one of those floppy discs.
CHARLES DE LINT
interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008
A name can't begin to encompass the sum of all her parts. But that's the magic of names, isn't it? That the complex, contradictory individuals we are can be called up complete and whole in another mind through the simple sorcery of a name.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot