01c. 1951 ADThat's the thing about magic; you've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
02c. 1951 ADInside us lies every possibility that is available to a sentient being. Every darkness, every light. It is the choices we make that decide who or what we will be.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
03c. 1951 ADI want to be magic. I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile. I want to be a friend of elves and live in a tree. Or under a hill. I want to marry a moonbeam and hear the stars sing. I don't want to pretend at magic anymore. I want to be magic.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
04c. 1951 ADWhen you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
05c. 1951 ADIt's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
06c. 1951 ADNot only do we all have magic, it's all around us as well. We just don't pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that's an act of magic. It doesn't matter if it's a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that's broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that's an act of magic.And what makes it magic is that we *choose* to create or help, just as we can choose to harm. But it's so easy to destroy and so much harder to make things better. That's why doing the right thing makes you stronger.If we can only remember what we are and what we can do, nobody can bind us or control us.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
07c. 1951 ADGina always believed there was magic in the world. "But it doesn't work in the way it does in fairy tales," she told me. "It doesn't save us. We have to save ourselves.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
08c. 1951 ADMagic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
09c. 1951 ADLife's an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: 'If there's no magic, there's no meaning.' Without magic- or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom- nothing has any depth. It's all just surface. You know: what you see is what you get. I honestly believe there's more to everything than that, whether it's a Monet hanging in a gallery or some old vagrant sleeping in an alley.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
10c. 1951 ADI do know that the gardens of the first lands are still lying there, right under the skin of the world- pulsing the way our heartbeat drums under our own skin. And I believe that there's a connectedness between everything that gives some people a deep and abiding affinity to a certain kind of place or creature.""Like totems?""Maybe. Or maybe something even more personal- something that's impossible to articulate with the vocabulary we have at the moment.""This is too weird."Annie shrugged. "What can I say? It's getting late, the stars are out. Once the sun sets, I tend to embrace whatever wild spirits are running around in the darkness, talking away to each other. I leave the logic of streets and pavement and cars and tall buildings behind and buy into the old magics that they're whispering about. Sometimes those little mysteries and bits of wisdom stick to the bones of my head and I carry them right out into the sunlight again. They're like Jack's stories, true and not true, all at the same time. They don't exactly shape my life, but they certainly colour it." She glanced at him, "I wouldn't like to live in a world where everything's as cut-and-dried as most people think it isCharles de Lint / quote ↗
11c. 1951 ADEverything has a spirit and it's all connected. If you think about that, if you live your life by it, then you're less likely to cause any hurt. It's like how our bodies go back into the ground when we die, so that connects us to the earth. If you dump trash, you're dumping it on your and my ancestors. Or to bring it down to its simplest level: treat everything and everybody the way you want to be treated, because when you hurt someone, you're only hurting yourself.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
12c. 1951 ADThe faerie represent the beauty we don't see, or even choose to ignore. That's why I'll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important."- Jilly CoppercornCharles de Lint / quote ↗
13c. 1951 ADThere were two forests for every one you entered. There was the one you walked in, the physical echo, and then there was the one that was connected to all the other forests, with no consideration of distance, or time. The forest primeval, remembered through the collective memory of every tree in the same way that people remembered myth- through the collective subconscious that Jung mapped, the shared mythic resonance that lay buried in every human mind. Legend and myth, all tangled in an alphabet of trees remembered, not always with understanding, but with wonder. With awe.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
14c. 1951 ADAll forests are one... They are all echoes of the first forest that gave birth to Mystery when the world began.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
15c. 1951 ADWhat do they say about meeting a bear in the woods? Oh right, you shouldn't. And to make sure you don't, you should make a lot of noise so that they'll will know where you are and keep their distance because, supposedly, they're as nervous of us as we are of them. Which is all goo, except this bear doesn't seem the least bit nervous. He's giving me a look like I'm Goldilocks, ate his porridge, broke his chair, slept in his bed, and now it's payback time."- WiddershinsCharles de Lint / quote ↗
16c. 1951 ADShe wanted to tell him what happened wasn't really his fault, but she knew that wasn't the way this kind of guilt worked. Intellectually, he already knew that. It was his emotions that were tripping him up. The tangle of love and memory and what might have been.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
17c. 1951 ADIt's my diary", she'd explained. "Every mark I've had drawn on my skin connects me to where and who I've been- so I never forget who I am and how I got here."There was humour in the smile she offered him. "And you know what the real beauty of it is?" Hank had shaken his head. "Nobody can take it away.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
18c. 1951 ADEverybody's got the potential for great good and great wrong in them, but it's thechoices we make that define who we really are.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
19c. 1951 ADI suppose the other thing too many forget is that we were all stories once, each and every one of us. And we remain stories. But too often we allow those stories to grow banal, or cruel or unconnected to each other.We allow the stories to continue, but they no longer have a heart. They no longer sustain us.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
20c. 1951 ADI watched the people passing below, each of them a story, each story part of somebody else's, all of it connected to the big story of the world. People weren't islands, so far as I was concerned. How could they be, when their stories kept getting tangled up in everybody else's?Charles de Lint / quote ↗
21c. 1951 ADOnce upon a time there was what there was, and if nothing had happened there would be nothing to tell.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
22c. 1951 ADGrowing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
23c. 1951 ADWe end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.Charles de Lint / quote ↗
24c. 1951 ADI hate the thought of her being forced into a box that doesn't fit her. Of having her wings cut off, her sight blinded, her hearing muted, her voice stilled.Charles de Lint / quote ↗