Charles de Lint
Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician.
Only fools think they’re wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.
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.
You’re not a nun, are you? You haven’t taken one of those absurd vows that cut you off from what otherwise might be a full and healthy human existence?
Our time’s the most precious thing we’ve got to offer folks, and the worst thing a body can do is to take it away from us.
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...
You can talk all you want about consensual reality, Jilly, but that doesn’t change the fact that some things are real and some things aren’t. There’s a line drawn between the two that separates reality from fantasy.
He had seen trances before — wise men far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts.
But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.
Presences...
The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.
The thing is ... nothing’s as easy as we'd like it to be. ... And the real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.
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.
“You’re confusing me.”
“But not deliberately so,” Coyote says. “Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.”
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.
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?
There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.
Everybody makes the same mistake. 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.
Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?
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.
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.
There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.
While you live ... you have a duty to life. ... The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. ... Otherwise they fade away.