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
real thinking analogies
Fairy tales and mythology have always been an exaggerated distillation of the real world. Think of them as blueprints for how to deal with a multitude of situations that can arise in a person's life. The beauty of them is that their analogies resonate so deeply and they also entertain while they teach.
kids kingdoms crosses
All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom.
mean mind austin
Labels don't mean much to me one way or another -- except when they close the minds of potential readers. I'd much rather we do away with genres and simply file everything under fiction. I know it can work -- one of my favourite record stores (Waterloo Music in Austin) simply files everything alphabetically and no one seems to have much problem finding what they're looking for.
writing each-day next
The excitement I get from writing is finding out each day what happens next.
teenager book obsessive-love
Books and music saved me as a teenager because it was through them that I realized that I wasn't alone in my obsessive love for words and music.
honor
One cannot seek to uphold honor in a being that has none.
book writing differences
To me there's no difference between writing YA and adult except that in YA I make the book a little shorter and the protagonists are teens. The difference is in the readers.
art fall inspiration
Music's always part of my writing. I think all art is interconnected. You can't create or experience one without its influences bleeding into another. In my writing, music's mostly something that feeds my inspiration and mood while I'm writing, but it's also taught me how to score scenes and even novels. The rise and fall of the storyline echoes the flow of a good piece of music.
fun real book
The only real reason for self-referencing is the fun factor. It's fun for the writer, getting little peeks at what old characters might be up to. And it's fun for readers to spot a familiar face, or pick up on a made-up book title or something from an earlier story. I don't know that it does -- or even should -- contribute to the story in hand being any better than it would have been without it.
real ideas people
I've always known and been interested in people who are a little bit off the norm. I like to call attention to the idea that they are there, that they are real people, not invisible.
heart writing thinking
Write from the heart, what has meaning to you personally; have the patience and discipline to sit down and do it every day whether you're feeling inspired or not; never be afraid to take chances, in fact, make sure you take chances. As soon as you become complacent, you become boring ... . Read as much as possible, not simply in the genre, or what you think you're interested in, but other things as well.
writing world curtains
I always feel that there is a curtain, you know, that if I could just peek behind the curtain I'd see how the world really works. And since I haven't had it I have to write about it instead.
pain real character
My characters seem real because they are drawn from the realities of my life. I didn't have to research their pain; I just tapped into my own.
way sometimes bigger
It's not all about getting your own way. Sometimes there's a bigger picture.