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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.

Charles de Lint

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Charles de Lint
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: December 22
Musician
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Samuel M. Key
Paper
Whether
True
Truth
Remember
Writing
Wakes
Thing
Reader

More quotes by Charles de Lint

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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.
Charles de Lint
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In the dark attics of our minds, all times mingle.
Charles de Lint
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[She] had felt straight away that she wasn’t meeting a new friend, but recognizing an old one.
Charles de Lint
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Music’s the soundtrack of my life and has been since I was a teenager. There’s always music. If I’m not playing it, I’m listening to it. With my writing... sometimes it inspires a story, sometimes it highlights something I’m working on, sometimes it simply helps me stay in the narrative mood.
Charles de Lint
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Every time we fix something that broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that an act of magic. And what makes it magic is that we choose to create or help, just as we can choose to harm.
Charles de Lint
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I'm not Chinese. I thrive in interesting times.
Charles de Lint
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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.
Charles de Lint
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I like living in the city where I have all my books and music and can go out to buy that night's dinner or easily see a band. But I also like the wild places, especially hiking in the desert and the Eastern woodlands. Do I have to choose?
Charles de Lint
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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
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Let me give you some advice: Try to approach things without preconceived ideas, without supposing you already know everything there is to know about them. Get that trick down and you'll be surprised at what's really all around you.
Charles de Lint
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I'm not as trusting as people think I am. Sure, I see the best in people, but that doesn't mean it's really there.
Charles de Lint
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The puppet thinks: It's not so much what they make me do as their hands inside me.
Charles de Lint
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There's never an easy route to the things that matter.
Charles de Lint
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I hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled.
Charles de Lint
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The thing with pretending you're in a good mood is that sometimes you can actually trick yourself into feeling better.
Charles de Lint
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The family we choose for ourselves is more important than the one we were born into that people have to earn our respect and trust, not have it handed to them simply because of genetics.
Charles de Lint
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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.
Charles de Lint
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If you don't believe that the world has a heart, then you won't hear it beating, you won't think it's alive and you won't consider what you're doing to it.
Charles de Lint
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I think you're all mad. But that's part and parcel of being an artistic genius, isn't it?
Charles de Lint
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When you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.
Charles de Lint