“Let me give you some advice: Try to approach things without preconceived ideas, without supposing you already know everything there is to know about them. Get that trick down and you'll be surprised at what's really all around you.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“But what the evil people do, that's their responsibility. The burden they have to carry. Sure, when we see 'em starting on causing some hurt, we've got to try and stop 'em, but mostly what the rest of us should be concerning ourselves with is doing right by others. Every time you do a good turn, you shine the light a little further into the dark. And the thing is, even when we're gone, that light's going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“There was too much going on here -- too much that strayed from odd all the way over into seriously weird.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“The best change you can make is to hold up a mirror so that people can look into it and change themselves. That's the only way a person can be changed."
By looking into yourself," Zia said. "Even if you have to look into a mirror that's outside yourself to do it."
"And you know," Maida added. "That mirror can be a story you hear, or just someone else's eyes. Anything that reflects back so you can see yourself in it.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“It'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 from Someplace to Be Flying
“You've got to spread out as far as you can, cut down a whole forest, irrigate a whole desert, just to make sure that you won't accidentally stumble upon a place that's still in its natural state.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“Sometimes we wonder what it's like to feel normal," Maida said. "You know, like all the people you see out on the streets or sitting in their little boxy homes."
...
"But then", Maida went on, "we see how boring they are and we're happy to be the way we are.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“There's no such thing as fiction", Annie told him once. "If you can imagine something, then it's happened.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“I 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 is”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“The lonesome dark.
That's what Jack called a night like this. When you were distanced from everything and everybody. Out on your own and there was nobody to care if you were happy or sad. If you lived or died.
The lonesome dark hadn't existed in the old days. That was something people invented. Like time. Parcel up the days, parcel up the seasons. Add a minute here, a day there when it doesn't quite fit. Trim the square peg so that you could slide it into the round hole. In the old days the night was as open as the day. It wasn't a better place to hide because there was nothing to hide from. You weren't outside because there was no in.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“living in an environment I can't control doesn't scare me. I'm partial to the surprises.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“Everybody's got a true home—maybe not where they're living, but
where their heart lives.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“What if time's not linear, the way people think it is? What if the past, present and future are all going on at the same time, only they're separated by- oh, I don't know- a kind of gauze or something. And maybe there are people that can see through that gauze.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“But the evil people do, that's their responsibility. The burden they have to carry. Sure, when we see 'em starting on causing some hurt, we've got to try and stop 'em, but mostly what the rest of us should be concerning ourselves with is doing right by others. Every time you do a good turn, you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, even when we're gone, that light's going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
“I don't know," Kerry said. "It doesn't feel like any medicine I ever took before." She raised a hand to her forehead. "It really does feel like a light, shining inside me. How did you put it there?" Maida laughed. "You're so funny! I didn't put it there. Nobody can do that—not even Raven." "But—" "It was always there. I just made it a little brighter so that you could find it.”
― Charles de Lint, quote from Someplace to Be Flying
Charles de Lint
Born place: in Bussum, Netherlands
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“Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Moby Dick: or, the White Whale
“if fallacious reasoning always led to absurd conclusions, it would be found out at once and corrected. But once an easy, shortcut mode of reasoning has led to a few correct results, almost everybody accepts it; those who try to warn against it are not listened to.”
― E.T. Jaynes, quote from Probability Theory: The Logic of Science
“There exists no greater or more painful anxiety for a man who has freed himself from all religious bias, than how he shall soonest find a new object or idea to worship. But man seeks to bow before that only which is recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Grand Inquisitor
“According to the most rigorous estimates, the cost to save a life in the developing world is about $3,400 (or $100 for one QALY). This is a small enough amount that most of us in affluent countries could donate that amount every year while maintaining about the same quality of life. Rather than just saving one life, we could save a life every working year of our lives. Donating to charity is not nearly as glamorous as kicking down the door of a burning building, but the benefits are just as great. Through the simple act of donating to the most effective charities, we have the power to save dozens of lives. That’s”
― William MacAskill, quote from Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference
“Just because people love your gift doesn’t mean they love you. Most of them will never really know you. Most of them don’t care about you. They just want your gift. And it’s okay to share your gift. It’s a good thing to serve your gift to people or in places that may benefit from it.”
― T.D. Jakes, quote from Destiny: Step into Your Purpose
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