Charles de Lint
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.Collection: Writing
It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.Collection: 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.Collection: Real
People want to know those details. They think it gives them greater insight into a piece of art, but when they approach a painting in such a manner, they are belittling both the artist’s work and their own ability to experience it. Each painting I do says everything I want to say on its subject and in terms of that painting, and not all the trivia in the world concerning my private life will give the viewer more insight into it than what hangs there before their eyes. Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, even titling a work is an unnecessary concession.Collection: Art
I wouldn't like to live in a world where everything's as cut-and-dried as most people think it isCollection: Cutting
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?Collection: Baby
It's not something you can prove....I know you hate to hear this, but you either have it, or you don't.Collection: Hate
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.Collection: Girl
The past scampers like an alley cat through the present, leaving the paw prints of memories scattered helter-skelter.Collection: Memories
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.Collection: Sight
Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.Collection: Confusion
It reminded me of that tongue-in-cheek quick history of art I'd overheard...Used to be people couldn't draw very well, then they could, and now they can't again.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Writing
Ghosts were just a way that some stupid people dealt with their dull lives.Collection: Stupid
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.Collection: Simple
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.Collection: Notebook
She hoped he was running to his red deer woman, and that when he tapped on the door of her heart, she'd open it wide and let him in.Collection: Running
What do they say about meeting a bear in the woods? Oh right, you shouldn't. And to make sure you don't, you should make a lot of noise so that they'll will know where you are and keep their distance because, supposedly, they're as nervous of us as we are of them. Which is all goo, except this bear doesn't seem the least bit nervous. He's giving me a look like I'm Goldilocks, ate his porridge, broke his chair, slept in his bed, and now it's payback time."- WiddershinsCollection: Distance
The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.Collection: Sometimes
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.Collection: Summer
You walk around with a negative attitude and you're just naturally going to bring trouble and hard times down on yourself.Collection: Attitude
One cannot seek to uphold honor in a being that has none.Collection: Honor
Well, while I didn't have the more extreme experiences of some of my characters, I didn't exactly come from the most normal of households. Or rather, it was normal, in that dysfunctional families appear to be the norm.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Artist
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.Collection: Others Happiness
I was a misfit, but I think most teenagers feel that way. I don't care if you were a popular jock or the kid who spent his lunch hours in a stairwell reading a book, we all seem to have dealt with insecurities of one kind or another throughout our high school years.Collection: Teenager
A body of work may be reviled - mostly by those who have no knowledge of its workings - and yet still carry elements of what can only be considered eternal truths.Collection: Elements
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.Collection: Pain
I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.Collection: Writing
The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Teenager
The real trouble comes from not knowing what we really want in the first place.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: No Excuses
Fairy tales and mythology have always been an exaggerated distillation of the real world. Think of them as blueprints for how to deal with a multitude of situations that can arise in a person's life. The beauty of them is that their analogies resonate so deeply and they also entertain while they teach.Collection: Real
The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.Collection: Fun
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Notebook
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.Collection: Mean
All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom.Collection: Kids
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.Collection: Honesty
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.Collection: Journey