Charles de Lint Quotes - Page 6

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.

I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.

One cannot seek to uphold honor in a being that has none.

The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.

Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music.

I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.

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'm pretty much fixated on certain themes. Family, but it's family of choice as much as family of blood. Individuality, yes, but not at the cost of others' happiness. Be true to your friends. Remembering to find some wonder and hope in the world. Basically it boils down to: treat people like you'd like them to treat you, leave the world a little better than it was when you got here, respect others and stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves.

I always feel that there is a curtain, you know, that if I could just peek behind the curtain I'd see how the world really works. And since I haven't had it I have to write about it instead.

It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.

I'd say that any character or setting can be given a bit of an otherworldly sheen and be the better for it. The one thing I insist on with my own writing is that I won't let magic solve my characters' real world problems. The solutions have to come from the characters themselves.

I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.

Living on the street as a kid changed the way I looked at everything. It was a different time and while it had its dangers, it was nothing like it would be today. It was the Summer of Love and there was a real sense of community among us. We were hippies who looked out for each other instead of trying to rip each other off. We only had to watch out for the police who liked to roust us just on general principles, and the kids who came in from the suburbs to do a little hippie-bashing.

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.

It's not something you can prove....I know you hate to hear this, but you either have it, or you don't.

Even, she thought, even without the gift of witchsight, there was more beauty to be found in the world than could ever be snared in language or music. And with the sight.

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

I'm not...' Angharad began, but then she thought. Not what? Not a bad person? Perhaps. But had she never known anger? Never held unkind thoughts? The stranger's observation was valid. No one was innocent of darkness.

The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.

Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.

One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.

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.

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.

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

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?