Quotes about magic
page 5

“Magical places are always beautiful and deserve to be contemplated… Always stay on the bridge between the invisible and the visible.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Beauty

“Maybe there was a magic stronger than spells. Maybe the soulmate principle was responsible, and if two people were meant to be together, nothing could keep them apart.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 1

People

“I'm in a foreign land, trying to explain myself, trying to make myself known. Because isn't that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn't that the simple magic phrase?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“He stopped what he was doing and pulled out his magic phone.

Okay, the phone wasn't magic, but it does things my computer struggles with.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

“In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: Outliers: The Story of Success

“So for Magic Problem-Solving 101, we headed to the training room and blew stuff up.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

Problem, Training

“Be careful, okay, when you go there. Talia was really scared of this Malvolia chick. She could be dangerous.”
“What’s she going to have—an assault weapon?”
“Worse,” I say. “She’s got magical powers.”

Alex Flinn (1966) American children's writer

Source: A Kiss in Time

“They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

Thinking, Madness

“Touch magic. Pass it on.”

Jane Yolen (1939) American speculative fiction and children's writer

Source: Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood

“Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

Art

“Life isn’t like the movies. People don’t change overnight. people don’t go from arrogant and self-righteous to ashamed and remorseful. They don’t suddenly give in when they’ve spent years taking out. No doesn’t magically become a Yes.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

Life, People, Change

“Any moment now…" The girl [Calypso] stared out at the water.
No magical raft appeared.
"Maybe it got stuck in a traffic," Leo said.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Girl, Water, Appearance

“Magic could not be measured and explained in scientific terms, for magic grew through destroying the very natural principles that made science as people knew it impossible.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bites

People, Nature, Science

“As Mo had said: writing stories is a kind of magic, too.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Variant: Writing stories is a kind of magic, too.
Source: Inkheart

“One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“A long white ribbon shot out of the crack in the wall. The ribbon just kept coming, weaving itself into some kind of shape next to Anubis, and my first thought was, My god, he’s got a magic roll of toilet paper.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

God

“Syphilis. Lots and lots of magically delicious Syphilis.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Life was more difficult in Inkheart, yet it seemed to Meggie that with every new day Fenoglio's story was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Life, Beauty, Heart

“Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.”

Jeanette Winterson book Lighthousekeeping

Source: Lighthousekeeping

Knowledge

“And so he was reading the story as if it were a spell and the words of it, spoken aloud, could make magic happen.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Tale of Despereaux

Source: The Tale of Despereaux

Reading

“Maybe by the time they were in their Silver Year, Master Rufus would communicate complicated theories of magic by the lifting of a single bushy eyebrow.”

Cassandra Clare book The Iron Trial

Source: The Iron Trial

Communication, Time

“Magnus raised his hands above his head and clapped once. The room flooded with light. "You see? You think that would be possible without magic?

"Actually," replied Simon, "It is. If you watched infomercials you'd know that.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Thinking, Light

“This magical, marvelous food on our plate, this sustenance we absorb, has a story to tell. It has a journey. It leaves a footprint. It leaves a legacy. To eat with reckless abandon, without conscience, without knowledge; folks, this ain't normal.”

Joel Salatin (1957) American environmentalist

Source: Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World

Food, Knowledge

“Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it, and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Beauty

“Of course, most mortals can't see magic clearly, so I'm not sure what theythey saw as we passed overhead. No doubt it caused many of them to adjust their medication.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

“Artemis Fowl grinned right back at him and pointed his index finger to the sky… from the tip of this finger sprang a small blue spark that exploded like a tiny firework.
“I know magic can be stolen,” said Artemis. “Because I stole some myself.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

“As for Percy, he held his magic ballpoint pen like he was trying to decide whether to bust out some sword moves or autograph Nike’s chariot.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“It was karma, it was kismet, it was magic. It doesn't matter how it happened, just that it did.”

Shannon Hale (1974) American fantasy novelist

Source: The Actor and the Housewife

“A piece of writing is like a piece of magic. You create something out of nothing.”

Susanna Clarke (1959) British author

“But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Suicide

“The outside lights were on, and it was snowing, and it looked like magic. Like we were somewhere else. Like we were someplace better.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Light

“There aren't any magical words, really. Words just hold the magic.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

“Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

World, Change

“Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

Thinking, Dance

“Yes, the stories are dangerous, she was right. A book is a magic carpet that flies you off elsewhere. A book is a door. You open it. You step through. Do you come back?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Books

“I have lived with magic and without magic, and I can tell you with certainty that a life with magic is better….”

Chris Bohjalian (1962) American novelist

Source: Secrets of Eden

Life

“A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.”

Caroline Gordon (1895–1981) Novelist, literary critic

Books, World, Way

“Tears could not be equal, if I wept diamonds from the skies.
Jenks (Black Magic Sanction)”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Tear

“Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men's souls.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Men, Soul

“Just let it happen and, I promise you, all that is magic will appear.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Source: This Is Gonna Hurt: Music, Photography, And Life Through The Distorted Lens Of Nikki Sixx

Appearance

“Magic can be found in stolen moments.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

“I love you,” Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn’t.

“That’s what you all keep saying,” I answered. “But it doesn’t seem to get me any happier.”

Charlaine Harris book Dead Reckoning

Source: Dead Reckoning

Love

“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Art

“Leaving behind the babble of the plaza, I enter the Library. I feel, almost physically, the gravitation of the books, the enveloping serenity of order, time magically dessicated and preserved.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Source: Dreamtigers

Books, Feeling, Time

“She wrote, 'Dandelion, I love you.' And I thought that was magic. It's not in you, it's between you. It's bigger and stronger than you are”

Melvin Burgess (1954) British children's writer

Source: Smack

Love

“So much magic, Clary thought, and nothing to mend a broken heart”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Heart

“I'd spent a night with Ranger a while ago, and I knew what happened when he was encouraged. Ranger knew how to make a woman want him. Ranger was magic.”

Janet Evanovich book Eleven on Top

Source: Eleven on Top

Night

“Magic comes from what is inside you. It is a part of you. You can't weave together a spell that you don't beleive in.”

Jim Butcher (1971) American author

Parting

“I held out my dad’s magic box and let it o, sure it would smash to the floor. Instead, the box disappeared.
“Cool,” I said. “Sure you I can get it back?”
“No,” Bast said. “Now come on!”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Box

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace - this magic, organic agora - starts to splutter, and people suffer.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“Beck Breaks from the Pack,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=546 WorldNetDaily.com, April 23, 2010. 2010s, 2010

Life, People, Suffering, Time

“When the ceremony ended Anne and I stayed on the field to greet friends, many of whom had traveled to share the ceremony with us. In one respect it was a difficult day at the end of a difficult month. But in the broader view of life, it was a magical evening at the end of an incredible journey we shared. We walked back over to the quarters we would move out of a few days later, and found friends in the yard and almost every room. At one point I saw Mike Hall, Charlie Flynn, Shawn Lowery, and Casey Welch standing in the fading summer light. I thought of my father, of my first day at West Point, and of our cold Christmas Eve flight over Afghanistan seven months before. The final words of my last speech in uniform, spoken just an hour before were repeated in my mind: "If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people, and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have it any other way… To the young leaders of today and tomorrow, it's a great life. Thank you."”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

Closing words, p. 394
My Share Of The Task (2013)

Life, People, Way, Travel

“If only I had the magic self of babyhood when I remembered what it was like before I was born, I wouldnt worry about death now knowing both to be the same empty dream.”

Jack Kerouac book Tristessa

Tristessa (1960)

Death, Dreams

“There are times when it is inappropriate to feel wholly good. Now is one of them. As the saying goes, "If you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention."
This doesn't mean that we need to be in a constant state of rage or irritability or guilt. It means we need to use our magical tools to face the stark and overwhelming realities that confront us, acknowledge our feelings, and transmute them into the energy we need for change.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Toward an Activist Spirituality (2003)

Feeling, Reality, Rage, Change

“I know that I disagree with many other UML experts, but there is no magic about UML. If you can generate code from a model, then it is programming language. And UML is not a well-designed programming language.
The most important reason is that it lacks a well-defined point of view, partly by intent and partly because of the tyranny of the OMG standardization process that tries to provide everything to everybody. It doesn't have a well-defined underlying set of assumptions about memory, storage, concurrency, or almost anything else. How can you program in such a language?
The fact is that UML and other modelling language are not meant to be executable. The point of models is that they are imprecise and ambiguous. This drove many theoreticians crazy so they tried to make UML "precise", but models are imprecise for a reason: we leave out things that have a small effect so we can concentrate on the things that have big or global effects. That's how it works in physics models: you model the big effect (such as the gravitation from the sun) and then you treat the smaller effects as perturbation to the basic model (such as the effects of the planets on each other). If you tried to solve the entire set of equations directly in full detail, you couldn't do anything.”

James Rumbaugh (1947) Computer scientist, software engineer

James Rumbaugh in Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden eds. (2009) Masterminds of Programming. p. 339; cited in " Quote by James Rumbaugh http://www.ptidej.net/course/cse3009/winter13/resources/james" on ptidej.net. Last updated 2013-04-09 by guehene; Rumbaugh is responding to the question: "What do you think of using UML to generate implementation code?"

Memory, Sun

“I suppose that writers should, in a way, feel flattered by the censorship laws. They show a primitive fear and dread at the fearful magic of print.”

John Mortimer (1923–2009) English barrister, dramatist, screenwriter and author

Clinging to the Wreckage : A Part of Life (1982), p. 183

Fear, Law, Way, Feeling

“Mischief moves somewhere near and I must blast it with my magic!”

Jack Vance Dying Earth

Source: Dying Earth (1950-1984), The Dying Earth (1950), Chapter 1, "Turjan of Miir"

“For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words.”

Ralph Ellison book Invisible Man

Source: Invisible Man (1952), Chapter 17.

Science

“Darwin's theory of evolution was simple, beautiful, majestic and awe-inspiring. But because it contradicts the allegorical babblings of a bunch of made-up old books, it's been under attack since day one. That's just tough luck for Darwin. If the Bible had contained a passage that claimed gravity is caused by God pulling objects toward the ground with magic invisible threads, we'd still be debating Newton with idiots too.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian 2 August 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2008/aug/02/television.television Guardian columns

God, Books, Beauty

“It is an ancient custom, as ancient as the Roman Empire, to idolize those whom we honor, to make them larger than life, to give their marvelous accomplishments a magical and mystical origin. By exalting the accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. into a legendary tale that is annually told, we fail to recognize his humanity -- his personal and public struggles -- that are similar to yours and mine. By idolizing those whom we honor, we fail to realize that we could go and do likewise.”

Charles V. Willie (1927) American sociologist

The Ethical Foundations of Dr. King's Political Action http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/01.17/99-mlkspeech.html Speech on Martin Luther King day (2002)

Life, Personality

“Man, I feel as though I'm standing on magic legs in a special effects process shot that is too unbelievable to imagine and far too costly to make a reality.”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

67th Academy Award Speech (1995)

Feeling, Imagination, Reality

“Poetry is a magic of pauses … not a thing of tunes, but of heightened consciousness.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

Poetry and Criticism - American Peoples Encyclopedia , Groller , New York 1965

“Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink,
Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides.
Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now?
You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes?”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, S.C.I.E.N.C.E. (1997)

Imagination, Thinking

“Ingres was one of those artists to whom the outline was something sacred and magical, and the reason is that it was the means of reconciling the major conflict in his art, the conflict between abstraction and sensibility. The difference between what we see and a sheet of white paper with a few thin lines on it is very great. Yet this abstraction is one which we seem to have adopted almost instinctively at an early stage in our development not only in Neolithic graffiti but in early Egyptian drawings. And in spite of its abstract character, the outline is responsive to the least tremor of sensibility.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 4: Ingres I: The Years of Inspiration

Art, Drawing

“When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from it, does it startle or amaze me - do I get excited, upset? That is the test any artwork has to pass: can it create an emotional impact on a human being even when he has no education or any information about art? I’ve always had a problem with art that you can only understand if you have a degree in art history, and I have a problem with theories. Most of them are bullshit anyway. Most critics and theorists have little respect for artists, and I think the importance of theory in art is totally overrated. Real art is self-evident. Real art is intense, enchanting, exciting and unsettling; it has a quality and magic that you cannot explain. Art is not logic, and if you want to experience it, your mind and rational thinking will be of little help. Art is something spiritual that you can only experience with your senses, your heart, your soul.”

Gottfried Helnwein (1948) Austrian photographer and painter

Interview by Brendan Maher http://www.gottfried-helnwein-interview.com/index.html, Start, Ireland, November 24, 2004

Education, Art, Soul, History

“You can't take a dying project, sprinkle it with the magic pixie dust of "open source," and have everything magically work out.”

Jamie Zawinski (1968) American programmer

" resignation and postmortem http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html" (essay)

“Your solemn letter has reached (me)…
At the ‘hidden level’ (occult word), the downfall of the Marhatahs and the Jats has been decided. Now, therefore, it is only a matter of time. As soon as the servants of Allah gird up their loins and come out with courage, the magic fortress of falsehood will be shattered…”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

To Najibuddaulah, the Ruhela Ally of Abdali in India. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p. 103.
From his letters

Courage, Time

“And the sad part is that you actually believe in The Undertaker. You actually believe that he has all these magic powers which is really alll just smoke and mirrors.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Friday Night SmackDown

Sadness, Parting

“And the magic word: Julie Andrews!”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

Bedazzled (1967)

“But when a great artist or a great writer lays hold upon either sort of ugliness he transfigures it instantaneously. With a touch from the magic ring he metamorphoses it into beauty. His Is a sort of fairy alchemy. His Is a sort of fairy alchemy.
When Velasquez, paints Sebastian, King Philip's dwarf, he gives him such an appealing look that we read the poor creature's secret and see the tragedy it involved — a man forced to get his living by discarding his human dignity, and becoming a toy, a living joke. The more poignant his martyrdom, within that misshapen body, the more beautiful the artist's work.
When Millet paints a poor rustic leaning upon a hoe, a wretch broken by fatigue, scorched by the sun, degraded as a beast of the field, he has only to add an expression of resignation in order to make this hideous nightmare a magnificent symbol of humanity.
When Shakespeare gives us Tago or Richard III, and when Racine gives us Néron and Narcisse, moral ugliness, interpreted by minds so clear, so penetrating, becomes a marvelous theme of beauty.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Secret, Beauty, Reading, Sun

“I lead a simple life now, I am foolish, an old man in love, a dreamer who dreams of nothing but reading to Allie and holding her whenever I can. I am a sinner with many faults and a man who believes in magic, but I am too old to change and too old to care.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Duke, Winter for Two, p. 212
1990s, The Notebook (1996)

Love, Life, Dreams, Change

“If you look at early shamanic texts and cultures, the magical powers that the shaman hopes the gods might give him, flying, turning into animals, invisibility, poetry – as if poetry was a magic power. As if it was the equivalent of turning into a dog or flying. As if. What does this tell us? Maybe there was a time when we could legitimately ask the gods for it as a gift. But we know there aren’t any gods, and that they can’t give those gifts, so the best thing we can do is go to church, listen to the lesson and hope we don’t burn. Have no direct contact with whatever form of god we choose to worship. It’s like the magical or spiritual equivalent of the big flaw in Marxism. Karl Marx, lovely geezer, very humane, a bit middle class but we’ll gloss over that, but his big flaw was that when he said “The reins of society will inevitably rest in the hands of those who control the means of production” didn’t take into account middle management. All the people who get between those with the means of production and the society. That translates onto a spiritual level as the shift from our earliest beliefs, which are all shamanic.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

De Abaitua interview (1998)

Love, God, People, Dogs

“The major obstacle and most difficult challenge in pursuit of a genuinely loving and caring relationship is to overcome the seductive powers and the addiction to the content approach to entering, creating, and maintaining it. The elusive golden thread of understanding lies in the how, and not the what. Specifically, as gender polarization in a relationship decreases, the experience of it improves. Without that rebalancing, even the most perfect content will unravel increasingly. Once the process is balanced, the magic of having ideal content is no longer necessary. The rebalancing process which creates a relationship free of polarizing gender defenses is clearly difficult and threatening initially in the same way that giving up an addiction seems to be. Once achieved however, a relationship free of distortion, false illusions, resentment, and hopelessness truly becomes possible.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

What Men Still Don't Know About Transforming Their Relationships, pp. 194–198
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love, Way, Understanding, Perfection

“Day by day there's a man in a suit / Who's gonna make you pay
For the thoughts that you think and the words / They won't let you say
I don't believe in magic / Life is automatic
And I don't mind being on my own.”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Listen Up, 1995
B-sides released by Oasis

Life, Thinking

“The liberal-hearted who run the newspapers and the university English departments and organize the bookstores have turned literature into well-meaning sociology. Thus do I get invited by the editor at some magazine to review your gay translation of a Colombian who has written a magical-realist novel. Trust me, there has been little magical realism in my life since my first trip to Disneyland.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Life, Literature, Universe, Heart

“A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Voiceless; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Music, Singing

“People say, "Why do you paint?" and I say, to make magic.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Serena Davies, "In the studio:Peter Blake, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/12/13/bastudio13.xml The Daily Telegraph, 2005-12-13 Art

People, Painting

“Big bangs don't make this. That's not a big bang. God made that. That's a liver. That's mystical. You and I can't make livers. Things banging don't make livers. This is mystical stuff. This is magic. This is perfection.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

The New York Times interview (2005)

God, Perfection

“It was indeed a dead grove, made up of the corpses of trees. Even the wood of these corpses was non-living, a deathly grey, silver-green, with peeling bark; and the bark had also flaked, shrivelling and simply sloughing off like dead skin. And arching along all the dead twigs, crawled a supple, clutching, lashing, bold convolvulus-serpent. It was her leaves which glowed a cheerful green on the dead branches, on all their agonizing bifurcations; it was her flowers which hung on the branches from clusters of tiny suckers and tentacles, astonishingly tender and serene. They were so alien to that austere and honest deathly sterility that they seemed almost dazzling. It was like an explosion of something splendid, like the sombre and magical secret of that dead river and its dry valley. There was something about that copse reminiscent of the hut on chickens' legs, or Koschei's hoard, or the field sown with dead men's bones.”

Yury Dombrovsky book The Faculty of Useless Knowledge

tr. Alan Myers, The Harvill Press, 1996, Part 1, Chapter 2, pp. 100-101 cited and discussed in Peter Doyle, Iurii Dombrovskii: Freedom Under Totalitarianism, Routledge, 2000, p. 145 https://books.google.com/books?id=MoLCsjaQT08C&lpg=PA145&ots=ekC9_khOAS&dq=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&pg=PA145#v=onepage&q=%22It%20really%20was%20a%20dead%20grove%22&f=false The Faculty of Useless Knowledge (1975)

Men, Secret, Flowers, Tree

“A tension went out of the air. Their business here was over then, and they all knew it; the magic moment had arrived when it was understood that nothing more would be established, discovered, or decided today. But the meeting, having once begun, must drag on for several long more hours before it could be ended. The engines of protocol had enormous inertial mass; once set in motion they took forever to grind to a stop.”

Michael Swanwick book Stations of the Tide

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 8, “Conversations in the Puzzle Palace” (p. 141)

Business

“I got magic and I got poetry in my fingertips.”

Charlie Sheen (1965) American film and television actor

On The Alex Jones Show February 24 2011

“The new magic formula is pull by resonance.”

Peter Kruse (1955–2015) German psychologist

Peter Kruse, Google's Think Quarterly, "Soft Values, Hard Facts" (March 2011). Think Quarterly http://www.thinkwithgoogle.co.uk/quarterly/data/peter-kruse-next-practice.html

“Apple is becoming more and more like a typical tech firm — that is, long on technology and short on magic. … Apple is drifting closer and closer to where it was back in the 1990s. It offers advancements that largely follow those made by others years earlier, product proliferation, a preference for more over simple elegance, and waning excitement.”

Rob Enderle (1954) American financial analyst

Hearing Crickets at Apple's WWDC and a Pin Drop in the Senate http://technewsworld.com/story/84597.html in Tech News World (12 June 2017)

“The strongest use of the symbol is to be found in its magical power of doubling the actual universe, and placing by its side an ideal universe, its exact counterpart, with which it can be compared and contrasted, and, by means of curiously connecting fibres, form with it an organic whole, from which modern analysis has developed her surpassing geometry.”

Benjamin Peirce (1809–1880) American mathematician

On the Uses and Transformations of Linear Algebra (1875)

Universe

“But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

“The Book-End,” Columbus Dispatch (1923) Collecting Himself (1989).
From other writings

Life, Men, Soul, Heart

“Everything delicate & beautiful, from Surrealism to Breakdancing, ends up as fodder for McDeath's ads; 15 minutes later, all the magic has been sucked out, & the art itself dead as a dried locust.”

Hakim Bey (1945) American political writer, poet and essayist

Immediatism (AK Press: 1994)

Beauty, Art, Dead

“I go forth to seek —
To seek and claim the lovely magic garden
Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Translated by Irina Zheleznova

Love, Grass

“Music should enrich the soul; it should teach spirituality by showing a person a portion of himself that he would not discover otherwise. It's easy to rediscover part of yourself, but through art you can be shown part of yourself you never knew existed. That's the real mission of art. The artist has to find something within himself that's universal and which he can put into terms that are communicable to other people. The magic of it is that art can communicate to a person without his realizing it… enrichment, that's the function of music.”

Bill Evans (1929–1980) American jazz pianist

http://www.billevanswebpages.com/billquotes.html.

People, Art, Music, Soul

“The magic happens only when the artist serves with love and the listener receives with the same spirit.”

Ravi Shankar (1920–2012) Indian musician and sitar player

Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, 27 November 2013, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Love

“This one guy, the worse guy in the music. The Yanni man. You know Yanni? First of all, anyone who looks like a magician and doesn't do magic, I don't like. I don't even like magic, I hate it. But I love the word, "Ta-da"! I love that word! I don't get to say it, right? I never do any magic. You just cant go around walking, "Ta-da!" "Ta-da!" "Ta-da!" The only time I can say it is when I do something really stupid or surprising. Like if I go out all night drinking and hitting strip clubs and I come home and I still got some money …. "Ta---da!"”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

I thought I was broke. Why does my jaw hurt?
Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Love, Money, Hate, Stupidity

“I think, as a society, though, I think more and more people are starting to question this idea that the government can do anything, [that] it has some sort of magical power to solve all of the problems; in fact, I think more and more people are coming to the conclusion that government is the problem.”

Glenn Jacobs (1967) American professional wrestler and actor

13:12&#8211;13:32. "Glenn 'Kane' Jacobs Mental Smackdown of Tennessee Lt Governor" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bWJwJr-R68 (2013)

People, Idea, Question, Problem

“I think it's true, as many say, I have dealt for many years with the problems that w:Op art so-called, is dealing with. For many years I have studied the logic and magic of color. And so I know what's involved when it comes to the interaction of colors, more than many who refuse to study it. But I found a way to study it, I think, that's all. And besides I refuse to be the father of a new bandwagon.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Art, Color, Way, Problem

“I realized that the image I had been given by my teachers, the scientists.... by their way of looking at Nature, was just another stage setting with all the magnificence and ingenuity that the genius of any artist produces in a work of art. I realized that in my scientific journey I had been under the power of a magic spell of a work of art whose reality was just as true as the verity of the image in an artist's vision.”

Naum Gabo (1890–1977) Russian sculptor

Quote from Of divers arts, (1962), p. 21; as cited in International Handbook on Giftedness, Larisa V. Shavinina (2009), p. 862
undated

Art, Way, Nature, Reality

“He saw Hawks, grunted, hefted the bottle and said, “I hate the stuff. It tastes lousy, it makes me gag, it stinks, and it burns my mouth. But they keep putting it in your hands, and they keep saying ‘Drink up!’ to each other, and ‘What’s the matter, Charlie, falling a little behind, there? Freshen up that little drinkee for you?” Until you feel like a queer of some kind, and a bore for the times you say you don’t want another one, positively. And they fill their folklore with it, until you wouldn’t dream you were having a good time unless you’d swilled enough of the stuff to poison yourself all the next day. And they talk gentleman talk about it—ages and flavors and brands and blends, as if it wasn’t all ethanol in one concentration or another. Have you ever heard two Martini drinkers in a bar, Hawks? Have you ever heard two shamans swapping magic?””

Algis Budrys book Rogue Moon

Source: Rogue Moon (1960), Chapter 5, Section 6 (p. 112)

Hate, Age, Dreams, Feeling

“I realized then why we respond to the sound of the waves, and the falling of rain, and wind in the trees. Because they are meaningless. They are nothing to do with us. They are outside our control. They remind us of a time, very early in our lives, when we did not understand the noises around us but simply accepted them in our ears; and so they provide blessed relief from our continual needy attempts to change our world in magic deed or endless thought. Meaningless sound, which welove against the anxiety of action, of pattern-making, of seeking to comprehend and change. As soon as we picked up someting and used it for a purpose, we were both made and damned. Tool-making gave us the world, and we lost our minds.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Epilogue - Cannon Beach
The Lonely Dead (2004)

World, Understanding, Tree, Change

“The poor idiot is a living testimonial to the fact that everything takes longer and costs more. Even magic can’t get you around that.”

Glen Cook book Bleak Seasons

Source: Bleak Seasons (1996), Chapter 91 (p. 250)

“The problem is that sex is the most dangerous way of trying to achieve personal growth, because the life force has mixed it so liberally with a string sense of "magic", which, in the attempt at possession turns out to be an illusion. The attempt to possess a woman through an act of sex is as frustrating as trying to possess the scent of a rose by cooking and eating it.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Corpse Garden (1998), p. 250

Life, Sex, Way, Problem

“Some readers will no doubt say that a devil is inside me; and though my faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, in that the signal comes and goes, I can only hope that isn't so.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"What's so funny about the Passion?", Daily Telegraph, 4 March 2004, p. 24.
2000s, 2004

Faith, Hope

“Much of the magical effect that poetry gives of rendering everything it touches pellucid comes from the necessity of compression that it imposes. The impossibility of pausing in poetry as long as may be needed to make sense clear causes many a set of words actually deficient in linguistic workmanship to pass for an eloquent brevity.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Promise of Words" in London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23

Sense

“I’m your apprentice!” Simon protested. “When are you going to teach me something?”
“Idiot boy! What do you think I’m doing? I’m trying to teach you to read and to write. That’s the most important thing. What do you want to learn?”
“Magic!” Simon said immediately. Morgenes stared at him.
“And what about reading…?” the doctor asked ominously.
Simon was cross. As usual, people seemed determined to balk him at every turn. “I don’t know,” he said. What’s so important about reading and letters, anyway? Books are just stories about things. Why should I want to read books?”
Morgenes grinned, an old stoat finding a hole in the henyard fence. “Ah, boy, how can I be mad at you…what a wonderful, charming, perfectly stupid thing to say!” The doctor chuckled appreciatively, deep in his throat.
“What do you mean?” Simon’s eyebrows moved together as he frowned. “Why is it wonderful and stupid?”
“Wonderful because I have such a wonderful answer,” Morgenes laughed. Stupid because…because young people are made stupid, I suppose—as tortoises are made with shells, and wasps with stings—it is their protection against life’s unkindnesses.”
“Begging your pardon?” Simon was totally flummoxed now.
“Books,” Morgenes said grandly, leaning back on his precarious stool, “—books are magic. That is the simple answer. And books are traps as well.”
“Magic? Traps?”
“Books are a form of magic—” the doctor lifted the volume he had just laid on the stack, “—because they span time and distance more surely than any spell or charm. What did so-and-so think about such-and-such two hundred years agone? Can you fly back through the ages and ask him? No—or at least, probably not.
But, ah! If he wrote down his thoughts, if somewhere there exists a scroll, or a book of his logical discourses…he speaks to you! Across centuries! And if you wish to visit far Nascadu or lost Khandia, you have also but to open a book….”
“Yes, yes, I suppose I understand all that.” Simon did not try to hide his disappointment. This was not what he had meant by the word “magic.” “What about traps, then? Why ‘traps’?”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Morgenes leaned forward, waggling the leather-bound volume under Simon’s nose. “A piece of writing is a trap,” he said cheerily, “and the best kind. A book, you see, is the only kind of trap that keeps its captive—which is knowledge—alive forever. The more books you have,” the doctor waved an all-encompassing hand about the room, “the more traps, then the better chance of capturing some particular, elusive, shining beast—one that might otherwise die unseen.”
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 7, “The Conqueror Star” (pp. 92-93).

Life, People, Books, Age

“Perfect knowledge of the space an object should occupy in a picture, and of the space that separates one object from another, establishes a new astronomy of things attached to our planet by the magic law of gravity. Canons of the Metaphysical aesthetic lie in the minutely-accurate and precisely-estimated use of surfaces and volumes.... We are building in paint a new Metaphysical psychology of things.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 233
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Lie, Law, Knowledge, Painting

Quotes about magic page 5

Quotes about magic
page 5