Charles de Lint Quotes

The literary world is filled with good and generous people. But then that's what writing is all about - empathy.

Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

The funny thing about writing is I think a lot of people assume that you're sitting in a garret with a quill pen for hour after hour.

I think that one of the things you have to do to become a storyteller is spend a lot of time reading stories.

While reading 'David Copperfield' in the middle of the night - probably because of the light, I had insomnia for the first time - I looked out of the window and thought, 'If this is what books can do, this is what I want to do.'

When I write, I imagine places more than people.

I'm constantly surprised by human nature and humanity. And I think that's why I love what I do: because I love to story-tell and bring new characters to life.

Fantasy is fantasy. It's fiction. It's not meant to be a textbook. I don't believe in letting research overwhelm the fiction. That's a danger of science fiction in particular, as opposed to fantasy. A lot of writers forget that what they're doing is supposed to be art.

I began seeing certain things happen in my life and other people's lives and getting inspired by it and writing about it. And that's where you get 'Happy Birthday' from and 'Ross Capicchioni' from or you even get 'I'm Sorry' from.

I always had stories inside my head and one day I just decided to start writing them down. I didn't actually decide.

One writes such a story [The Lord of the Rings] not out of the leaves of trees still to be observed, nor by means of botany and soil-science; but it grows like a seed in the dark out of the leaf-mold of the mind: out of all that has been seen or thought or read, that has long ago been forgotten, descending into the deeps. No doubt there is much personal selection, as with a gardener: what one throws on one's personal compost-heap; and my mold is evidently made largely of linguistic matter.

I can still remember the miraculous feeling of writing a sentence, then more sentences, telling a story. The first thing I wrote was a one-page summary of Robinson Crusoe and I am so sorry I do not have it any more; it was at that moment I became an author.

Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.

I realized that everything important in sci-fi showed up in the magazines first. It's the proving ground for new writers and new ideas.

The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there's no limit to what it might contain.

I'm a believer in using whatever works for fiction, but mostly, that's not life.

People are looking for inspiration, and my books are sometimes the vehicles of what people are looking for.

The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.

When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world.

One of the reasons I love writing for middle graders, besides their voracious appetite for books, is their deep concern for fairness and morality.

I think writing is an extension of a childhood habit - the habit of entertaining oneself by taking interesting bits of reality and building upon them.

I get to do what I love every day. I get to crawl into someone else's head and I love that.

You can't write an image, a metaphor, a story, a phrase, without leaning a little further into the shared world, without recognizing that your supposed solitude is at every point of its perimeter touching some other.