Shawn Bird > Shawn's Quotes

“I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures.”
― Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
― George Orwell

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”
― George Orwell

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell

“Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.”
― George Orwell

“Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”
― Orwell

“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It's a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it's true, but then so's everything.”
― Charles de Lint

“I 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

“Every time you do a good deed you shine the light a little farther into the dark. And the thing is, when you're gone that light is going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.”
― charles de lint

“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.”
― Charles de Lint

“The stronger a woman gets, the more insecure the men in her life feel. It doesn’t work that way for a woman. We celebrate strength--in our partners as well as in ourselves.”
― Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream

“All my life I've wanted to be the kid who gets to cross over into the magical kingdom. I devoured those books by C.S. Lewis and William Dunthorn, Ellen Wentworth, Susan Cooper, and Alan Garner. When I could get them from the library, I read them out of order as I found them, and then in order, and then reread them all again, many times over. Because even when I was a child I knew it wasn't simply escape that lay on the far side of the borders of fairyland. Instinctively I knew crossing over would mean more than fleeing the constant terror and shame that was mine at that time of my life. There was a knowledge – an understanding hidden in the marrow of my bones that only I can access ― telling me that by crossing over, I'd be coming home.
That's the reason I’ve yearned so desperately to experience the wonder, the mystery, the beauty of that world beyond the World As It Is. It's because I know that somewhere across the border there's a place for me. A place of safety and strength and learning, where I can become who I'm supposed to be. I've tried forever to be that person here, but whatever I manage to accomplish in the World As It Is only seems to be an echo of what I could be in that other place that lies hidden somewhere beyond the borders.”
― Charles de Lint

“Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?”
― Charles de Lint

“That'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

“As far as I'm concerned, the only difference between fact and what most people call fiction is about fifteen pages in the dictionary. ”
― Charles de Lint

“There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.”
― Charles deLint, Dreams Underfoot

“She knew this music--knew it down to the very core of her being--but she had never heard it before. Unfamiliar, it had still always been there inside her, waiting to be woken. It grew from the core of mystery that gives a secret its special delight, religion its awe. It demanded to be accepted by simple faith, not dissected or questioned, and at the same time, it begged to be doubted and probed.”
― Charles de Lint, The Little Country

“[She] had felt straight away that she wasn’t meeting a new friend, but recognizing an old one.”
― Charles de Lint, Memory and Dream

“Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.”
― Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl

“The thing to remember when you're writing is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader.”
― Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl

“It'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

“Every time we fix something that broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that an act of magic. And what makes it magic is that we choose to create or help, just as we can choose to harm.”
― Charles de Lint

“When 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, What the Mouse Found and Other Stories

“Magic's never what you expect it to be, but it's often what you need.”
― Charles de Lint, Moonlight and Vines