Charles de Lint: Quotes about the world

“I love this world … That is what rules my life.”

Charles de Lint

Goninan in Part One: The Hidden People, "Border Spirit" p. 336
The Little Country (1991)
Context: I love this world … That is what rules my life. When I die, I want to have done all in my power to leave it in a better state than it was in when I found it. At the same time I know that this can never be. The world has grown so complex that one voice can do little to alter it any longer. That doesn't stop me from doing what I can but it makes the task hard. The successes are so small, the failures so large and many. It's like trying to stem a storm with one's bare hands.

Love , Life , World

“While you live … you have a duty to life. … The fey wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them. … Otherwise they fade away.”

Charles de Lint

Source: Into the Green (1993), p. 26; This has also been misquoted as "The few wonders of the world only exist while there are those with the sight to see them."

Life , World

“Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors.”

Charles de Lint book Moonheart

Moonheart (1994), p. 386
Context: Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors. And this I will tell you as well: One cannot seek to uphold honor in a being that has none.

World

“Often,” he says, “what we take from the spirit world is only a reflection of what lies inside ourselves.”

Charles de Lint

“Waifs and Strays”, p. 25
The Ivory and the Horn (1996)

World

“The Lost Music was his way of talking about the way he believed that old wives' tales and dance tunes and folktales were just the tangled echoes of something that's not quite of this world … something we all knew once, but have forgotten since.”

Charles de Lint

Part One: The Hidden People, "The Quarrlsome Piper" p. 19
The Little Country (1991)

World , Music , Way , Dance

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

Charles de Lint

"Footprints in the Dust", p. 19
Memory and Dream (1994)