"The best artists know what to leave out"
About this Quote
Restraint is the real flex. Charles de Lint’s line lands because it flips the usual myth of the artist as maximalist genius: the virtuoso isn’t the one who can cram the most into the frame, but the one who can cut without fear. “Leave out” doesn’t mean emptiness or minimalism as a style; it means judgment. The confidence to trust implication, to let negative space do narrative work, to accept that clarity often arrives through subtraction.
De Lint’s context matters here. As a writer associated with urban fantasy, he works in a genre that tempts authors toward encyclopedic worldbuilding: invented histories, magic systems, lore upon lore. His best stories (and the genre’s best stories) aren’t the ones that itemize every rule, but the ones that make the world feel lived-in by refusing to overexplain it. Mystery becomes an aesthetic choice, not a plot hole. The reader’s imagination is treated as a collaborator, not a liability.
The subtext is also quietly ethical. Leaving things out is a way of respecting attention in an era that rewards bloat: longer albums, extended cuts, content churn. Editing becomes care. It’s a reminder that art isn’t a database; it’s a guided experience, shaped by what’s withheld as much as what’s shown. The “best artists” aren’t hiding because they can’t deliver. They’re withholding because they know exactly what the work can survive without - and how much stronger it becomes when it has to breathe.
De Lint’s context matters here. As a writer associated with urban fantasy, he works in a genre that tempts authors toward encyclopedic worldbuilding: invented histories, magic systems, lore upon lore. His best stories (and the genre’s best stories) aren’t the ones that itemize every rule, but the ones that make the world feel lived-in by refusing to overexplain it. Mystery becomes an aesthetic choice, not a plot hole. The reader’s imagination is treated as a collaborator, not a liability.
The subtext is also quietly ethical. Leaving things out is a way of respecting attention in an era that rewards bloat: longer albums, extended cuts, content churn. Editing becomes care. It’s a reminder that art isn’t a database; it’s a guided experience, shaped by what’s withheld as much as what’s shown. The “best artists” aren’t hiding because they can’t deliver. They’re withholding because they know exactly what the work can survive without - and how much stronger it becomes when it has to breathe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Evidence:
The best artists know what to leave out.. Earliest traceable PRIMARY publication I can verify from author/official bibliographic info is the short story/essay piece “Dream Harder, Dream True,” which first appeared in the 1993 World Fantasy Convention souvenir anthology Temporary Walls (edited by Greg Ketter & Robert T. Garcia; Dreamhaven/World Fantasy Convention). Charles de Lint’s own site lists this as the first appearance of “Dream Harder, Dream True,” and later it was reprinted in his collection The Ivory and the Horn (Tor, 1995). Many quote sites also attribute the longer variant (“…how much of the support should show through…”) to The Ivory and the Horn and sometimes give a page number (often p. 293), but I could not verify that page number directly from a reliable scan of the Tor edition within this search session. To fully confirm the *first* appearance and capture the quote in its full surrounding context, you would need to consult a physical/digitized copy of Temporary Walls (1993) and locate the line within “Dream Harder, Dream True.” |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Lint, Charles de. (2026, February 8). The best artists know what to leave out. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-artists-know-what-to-leave-out-139936/
Chicago Style
Lint, Charles de. "The best artists know what to leave out." FixQuotes. February 8, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-artists-know-what-to-leave-out-139936/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The best artists know what to leave out." FixQuotes, 8 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-best-artists-know-what-to-leave-out-139936/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
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