Charles de Lint

I want to touch the heart of the world and make it smile.

Stone walls confine a tinker cold iron binds a witch but a musician's music can never be fettered, for it lives first in her heart and mind.

Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world, the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to, like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.

One expected growth, change without it, the world was less, the well of inspiration dried up, the muses fled.

Life is like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning.

The beginning of a friendship, the fact that two people out of the thousands around them can meet and connect and become friends, seems like a kind of magic to me. But maintaining a friendship requires work. I don't mean that as a bad thing. Good art requires work as well.