Life & Wisdom Quote by Charles de Lint

Storytelling gets framed as entertainment so often that we forget its more subversive promise: a “well-told tale” doesn’t just pass time, it reorders it. Charles de Lint’s line is deceptively modest, almost old-fashioned in its phrasing, but that’s part of the spell. “Few joys” isn’t a grand manifesto; it’s a quiet insistence that narrative pleasure can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the big-ticket thrills of modern life. The sentence sidesteps productivity, self-optimization, and cultural status. It argues for craft as a form of intimacy.

The key is the doubled emphasis: “the telling” and “well-told.” De Lint isn’t praising stories as abstract objects; he’s praising the act, the exchange, the moment when someone shapes experience into something shareable. That’s a writer’s credo, but it’s also a community ethic. In de Lint’s urban fantasy work, the city is porous: myth leaks into alleyways, and strangers become kin through the stories they carry. This quote quietly points to that worldview. A tale is a bridge between worlds, and the joy comes from crossing it together.

Subtext: storytelling is a kind of moral technology. A “well-told” tale implies responsibility - rhythm, honesty, generosity, restraint. It respects the listener. In an attention economy engineered for churn, de Lint’s claim reads like a defense of patience and wonder, and a reminder that delight can be made, not merely consumed.