Canadian writer (1951- )
All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.
CHARLES DE LINT
interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008
Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you're about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of 'em.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
One expected growth, change; without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.
CHARLES DE LINT
Memory and Dream
If you're not ready to die, then how can you live?
CHARLES DE LINT
Svaha
When you're invisible, no one can see that you're different.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Pal o' Mine", The Ivory and the Horn
I don't know what's waiting for us when we die--something better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
It's one of those inexplicable things. I remember stepping out of the airport the first time we came to Tucson (it must fifteen years or so ago, now) and I just felt like I was home. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I lived in desert country when I was a kid (Turkey, Lebanon, with lots of side trips through the Middle East and Egypt). Maybe it was from reading all those Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey westerns when I was a kid. Maybe it's because it was once a sea and we all came from there originally.
CHARLES DE LINT
interview with Kim Antieau, April 28, 2008
The moon likes secrets ... 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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot
I never even considered writing a career option. I just liked the play of words. I was certainly interested in story, but the stories I was telling then were in narrative verse and prose poems, short and succinct, except for one novel-length poem written in narrative couplets.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn
My theory about writing is that one should write books you'd like to read, but no one else has written yet. So, as long as I stick with that, I'm entertaining myself, and then hopefully my readers as well. I hope to god I realize that I'm repeating myself, if I ever do. But if I don't, I'm sure my readers will let me know.
CHARLES DE LINT
"A Conversation With Charles de Lint", SFsite, 2000
Labels don't mean much to me one way or another -- except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work -- one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for.
CHARLES DE LINT
Green Man Review, October 2006
It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
It's good to have mysteries. It reminds us that there's more to the world than just making do and having a bit of fun.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Paperjack", Dreams Underfoot: The Newford Collection
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
interview, Challenging Destiny, Number 9
We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.
CHARLES DE LINT
Tapping the Dream Tree
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?
CHARLES DE LINT
"Baiting the Hook", Memory and Dream