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I find the characters in my head and the more I write about them, the better I get to know them.

Charles de Lint

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Charles de Lint
Age: 72
Born: 1951
Born: December 22
Musician
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Samuel M. Key
Better
Find
Writing
Characters
Head
Write
Character

More quotes by Charles de Lint

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Stone walls confine a tinker cold iron binds a witch but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.
Charles de Lint
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I'm not...' Angharad began, but then she thought. Not what? Not a bad person? Perhaps. But had she never known anger? Never held unkind thoughts? The stranger's observation was valid. No one was innocent of darkness.
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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Inside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be.
Charles de Lint
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Tattoos...are the stories in your heart, written on your skin.
Charles de Lint
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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
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We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.
Charles de Lint
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It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.
Charles de Lint
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How hard would it be to ask children what they see in their heads? How big should the house be in comparison to the family standing in front of it? What is it about the anatomy of the people that doesn't look right? Then let them try it again. Teach them to learn how to see and ask questions.
Charles de Lint
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As children, we come into the world with a natural desire to both speak and draw. Society makes sure that we learn language properly, right from the beginning, but art is treated as a gift of innate genius, something we either have or don't.
Charles de Lint
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You wouldn't want any creative process to lose its sense of fun and adventure, but that doesn't mean you can't take it seriously as well.
Charles de Lint
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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?
Charles de Lint
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The stronger a woman gets, the more insecure the men in her life feel. It doesn’t work that way for a woman. We celebrate strength--in our partners as well as in ourselves.
Charles de Lint
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There was too much going on here -- too much that strayed from odd all the way over into seriously weird.
Charles de Lint
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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.
Charles de Lint
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... he had understood, better than anyone ... the beauty that grew out of the simple knowledge that everything, no matter how small or large it might be, was a perfect example of what it was.
Charles de Lint
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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.
Charles de Lint
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The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination it is essentially a part of it.
Charles de Lint
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The real problem is, people think life is a ladder, and it's really a wheel.
Charles de Lint
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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.
Charles de Lint