Charles de Lint
Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician.
Wisdom never comes to those who believe they have nothing left to learn.
Legend and myth are what we use to describe what we don't comprehend. They are out attempts to make the impossible, possible — at least insofar as our spirits interact with the spirit of the world, or if that is too animistic for you, then let's use Jung's terminology and call it our racial subconscious. No matter the semantics, they are of a kind and it is legend and myth that binds us all together. ... Through them, through their retellings, and through those version that are called religion while they are current, we are taught Truth and we attempt to understand Mystery.
The Lost Music was his way of talking about the way he believed that old wives' tales and dance tunes and folktales were just the tangled echoes of something that's not quite of this world ... something we all knew once, but have forgotten since.
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.
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.
There are people who take the heart out of you, and there are people who put it back.
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.
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.
Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?
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.
There are few joys to compare with the telling of a well-told tale.
I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?
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.
Only fools think they’re wise; the rest of us just muddle through as we can.
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.”
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.
I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.
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?
It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.