Canadian writer (1951- )
There's never an easy route to the things that matter.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Journal Entries", Memory and Dream
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Music and Myth: A Conversation with Charles de Lint", The Internet Review of Science Fiction
The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
There's stories and then there's stories. The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you've heard them, they are forever a part of you. You nurture them and pass them on, and the giving only makes you feel better. The others are just words on a page.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot
If I pick up a wooden flute that hasn't been played for a year, it doesn't sound great at all. It's not only a matter of me being out of practice, because I could be playing one of my other flutes that I play more often and they will sound noticeably better, but the wood itself has a memory of sorts, and needs frequent playing to maintain its warmth and resonance. With writing, it really makes a huge difference if I don't write for three or four days because I will start to lose the flow of the particular story I'm working on. When that happens, I have to go back to the beginning of the book and put it all back into my head again.
CHARLES DE LINT
Locus Magazine, June 2003
There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories -- perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years -- and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
CHARLES DE LINT
Dreams Underfoot
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Journal Entries", Memory and Dream
I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.
CHARLES DE LINT
Green Man Review, October 2006
What we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Waifs and Strays", The Ivory and the Horn
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
"One Thing Leads to Another: An Interview with Charles de Lint", The Yalsa Hub, September 19, 2013
Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
Compromise is necessary ... so long as you never give up who you are. That isn't compromise; that's spiritual death. You have to remain true to yourself.
CHARLES DE LINT
"Where Desert Spirits Crowd the Night", The Ivory and the Horn
I guess there must be some good foster parents, but I never saw any. All mine ever wanted was to collect their checks and treat me like I was a piece of shit unless my case worker was coming by for a visit. Then I got moved up from the mattress in the basement to one of their kids' rooms.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
By enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.
CHARLES DE LINT
"The Pochade Box", The Ivory and the Horn
The trouble with advice is that it's usually something you don't want to hear.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
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.
CHARLES DE LINT
Locus Magazine, June 2003
We chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.
CHARLES DE LINT
Moonlight & Vines