Charles de Lint

Charles de Lint
Charles de Lintis a Canadian writer of Dutch origins. In 1974 he met MaryAnn Harris, and married her in 1980. They live in Canada...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth22 December 1951
CountryCanada
enemy may weapons
It may sound trite, but using the weapons of the enemy, no matter how good one's intentions, makes one the enemy.
notebook real character
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.
book writing seven
I'm really bad at describing my books. Journalists like to have things like "It's The Terminator Meets the Seven Dwarfs." And I can't do that with my books. If I could, I probably wouldn't write them.
believe magic different
I believe in a different kind of magic. The kind we make between each other.
song couple memories
I envy the music lovers hear. I see them walking hand in hand, standing close to each other in a queue at a theater or subway station, heads touching while they sit on a park bench, and I ache to hear the song that plays between them: The stirring chords of romance's first bloom, the stately airs that whisper between a couple long in love. You can see it in the way they look at each other... you can almost hear it. Almost, but not quite, because the music belongs to them and all you can have of it is a vague echo that rises up from the bittersweet murmur and shuffle of your own memories.
trash
You can take the woman outta the trash, but you can't take the trash out a the woman.
running heart doors
She hoped he was running to his red deer woman, and that when he tapped on the door of her heart, she'd open it wide and let him in.
attitude character writing
I think a good writer is a mix of confidence (sure that what they're writing is going to appeal to their readers) and uncertainty (what if all these words are crap?). If you're too confident, you get an attitude that seeps through into your writing, affecting the characters and the story. If you're too uncertain, you'll never finish anything.
girl hands league
The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own.
writing use different
Writing music uses a whole different process that involves a lot of noodling and just seeing what comes.