Charles de Lint Quotes

The '80s were a really different time for kids.Technology has changed so much of how we stay in touch and keep tabs on people.

I just happen to be from the generation that, like a lot of my older friends, started out writing letters.

You can email me, but I prefer letters that come through conventional mail. I like letters that have been licked by strangers.

There was a day when I liked writing letters -- it has gone. Unfortunately the passion for getting them remains.

I don't film messages. I let the post office take care of those.

Alongside my 'no email' policy, I resolve to make better use of the wonderful Royal Mail, and send letters and postcards to people. There is a huge pleasure in writing a letter, putting it in an envelope and sticking the stamp on it. And huge pleasure in receiving real letters, too.

I've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s - the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of pollution. Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and power lines and stuff. People wrote wonderful long letters that took months to receive, and now everything is email.

Sadly, e-mail has triggered the decline of the handwritten note; I have seen its near-disappearance in my lifetime.

Saving a letter from an old friend doesn't exist anymore. Everything is texted or emailed.

I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world.

I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.

I think the days before cell phones, when it was dirt clod wars at construction sites, was a lot more wholesome and productive, to be perfectly honest.

It's funny the more technological advanced everything gets, the more like acting in your bedroom when you're a kid it is.

I was a pen pal with one guy, a long time ago. I think we only wrote to each other twice. We didn't really keep it up that long. But, I love it. I think it's really sweet and very creative and freeing, when you get to put a pen to paper, 'cause you don't really do it that much these days, with all this technology.

The post office has a great charm at one point of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.

I realized how valuable the art and practice of writing letters are, and how important it is to remind people of what a treasure letters--handwritten letters--can be. In our throwaway era of quick phone calls, faxes, and email, it's all to easy never to find the time to write letters. That's a great pity--for historians and the rest of us.

The possibility of interpersonal communication has increased substantially with contemporary technology. But as compared with the major changes, which were long ago, these are not huge.

I have received no more than one or two letters in my life that were worth the postage.

As I grow old I hate the writing of letters more and more, and like getting them better and better.

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

I hike every day with my dog, after the kids are off to school. I tend to get wrapped up in all the things that need to be done during the day, so I really am strict about setting that time aside for myself and not scheduling anything before eleven, so I can get my hike in.

Since I was a little kid, I did like fairy tale. I did dress up like Little Red Riding Hood. My mom had to make me a cape.

I believe in sending a lot of letters and notes to friends.

I think that's the problem with kids now. Everything is manufactured. And then they're sitting there watching the television, where all the work is done for them. Radio made me use my imagination.

For at least twenty minutes she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the scene. Liesel did not. The book thief saw only the mechanics of the words--their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Max. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. It he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again?