Quotes by Charles de Lint

“Don’t you ever watch TV?Jilly shook her head. What? And let the aliens monitor my brain waves?”

“The best kinds of practical jokes are those that backfire on whoever’s playing the trick.”

“The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.”

“I’d rather stare at a brick wall, any time, than watch that damn TV in the lounge, he’d told Jilly more than once. That’s when things started to go wrong—with the invention of television. Wasn’t ti...”

“Jilly was one of those who preferred to know what was going on and try to do something about it, rather than pretend it wasn’t happening and hoping that, by ignoring what was wrong, it would just g...”

“But music has its own enchantment and the first few notes of an old tune are all that it requires to transform any site into a place of magic, even if that location is no more than a windowless off...”

“In one form or another, it was one of the first implements created by ancient people to give voice to the mysteries that words cannot encompass, but that they had a need to express; only the drum w...”

“That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.”

“There’s stories and then there’s stories, he said, interrupting her. The ones with any worth change your life forever, perhaps only in a small way, but once you’ve heard them, they are forever a pa...”

“Who is he? she asked. Or maybe I should be asking what is he?I’ve always thought of him as a kind of anima, Jilly said. A loose bit of myth that got left behind when all the others went on to where...”

“It’s so much easier for most people to relate to a TV set than it is to another person. They get all this data fed into them, but they don’t know what to do with it anymore. When they talk to other...”

“They’d met three years ago at a record launch party when Hilary had made a pass at her. Once they got past the fact that Zoe preferred men and wasn’t planning on changing that preference, they disc...”

“Creeps don’t need reasons for what they do; that’s why they’re creeps.”

“Do you know what fear stands for? Fuck Everything And Run.”

“She’s always so ready to believe anything that anyone tells her, so long as it’s magical.Well, I believe in magic, too, but it’s the magic that can turn a caterpillar into a butterfly, the natural ...”

“I find that a lot of people have this thing about making crap romantic, the way they like to blur outlaws and heroes, the good with the bad.”

“I know that feeling all too well, but I broke the only pair of rose-colored glasses I had the chance to own a long time ago.”

“Every big city like this is really two worlds. You could say it’s divided up between the haves and the have-nots, but it’s not that simple. It’s more like some people are citizens of the day and ot...”

“It was the old story, he realized. Everything, everybody wanted to lay claim to a piece of your soul. And if they couldn’t have it, they made you pay for it in guilt.”

“Look, I’m sorry if I don’t measure up to how people want me to be, but this is just the way I am.”