Charles de Lint Quotes

A long time ago a bunch of people reached a general consensus as to what's real and what's not and most of us have been going along with it ever since.

The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on.

The presence of others who see what we see and hear what we hear assures us of the reality of the world and ourselves.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

When you think you have something special, you can't be the only one what thinks it; everybody else has to agree.

Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.

The creation of a world view is the work of a generation rather than of an individual, but we each of us, for better or for worse, add our brick to the edifice.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

I've got billions of sparrows to worry about as well as everything else'. So there's the whole idea that whatever it is that you believe, it can never be valid unless you have some consensus reality demonstration.

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct-- if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

In a world where people believe in something, then it does exist.

Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.

We are taught what reality is in all kinds of ways.

Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.

Sanity - a trick of agreement

I want to say that the way in which we understand gender actually changes the way we live gender.

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

Friends can make you feel that the world is smaller and less sneaky than it really is, because you know people who have similar experiences.

Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody.

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.

Results from a given approach are "facts" as long as the approach fits the group or the tradition that is being addressed.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.