Source: hellomagazine.com http://www.hellomagazine.com/celebrities/2013030911512/rachel-weisz-us-interview/
Also quoted in Frank Sinatra, My Father (1986) by Nancy Sinatra, p. 201.
Playboy interview (1963)
“I question your innocence!
Help this blackbird!
She's a witch!
There's a stone around my leg.”
Song lyrics, Hounds of Love (1985), The Ninth Wave
Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 17; Pip describes Molly, Mr. Jaggers' housekeeper
Describing her tumultuous experiences of 1967, as quoted in Life and Lies of an Icon (1995) by Richard Witts.
Context: You could say it like was like a fairy tale at the time; Andy would be the good fairy, and Jim would play the giant, Brian would be the witch, Paul McCartney would be the frog who turns into a prince, no, it would have to be the other way round. Well, it didn't seem like a fairy tale at the time. It was a lot of hassle. But I learned a lot of things, and I began to compose my own songs.
Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.6 p. 95
Context: For a disciple of Jesus, in each case the decision hinges upon the answer to the question, Is it Christian? Is it a thing that Jesus could do without sin? Is it in harmony with his teaching and desires? Can it be followed without violating his way of life? Is it such that he can use it, sanction it and bless it? If the devout monk had decided the question solely upon these grounds, he should not have used torture to conquer the heretic, the judge should not have used the stake to silence witches, the politician should not adopt the evil practices of his opponent, and if the Christian citizen uses this same test, he should not, in my opinion, use the sword in resisting the military despot.
"The Witchcraft of Mary-Marie", in Baum's American Fairy Tales (1908)
Short stories
Context: "But what can I do?" cried she, spreading out her arms helplessly. "I can not hew down trees, as my father used; and in all this end of the king's domain there is nothing else to be done. For there are so many shepherds that no more are needed, and so many tillers of the soil that no more can find employment. Ah, I have tried; hut no one wants a weak girl like me."
"Why don't you become a witch?" asked the man.
"Me!" gasped Mary-Marie, amazed. "A witch!"
"Why not?” he inquired, as if surprised.
"Well," said the girl, laughing. "I'm not old enough. Witches, you know, are withered dried-up old hags."
"Oh, not at all!" returned the stranger.
"And they sell their souls to Satan, in return for a knowledge of witchcraft," continued Mary-Marie more seriously.
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried the stranger angrily.
“And all the enjoyment they get in life is riding broomsticks through the air on dark nights," declared the girl.
"Well, well, well!" said the old man in an astonished tone. "One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions."
"Oh. I'd like to be that kind of witch!" said Mary-Marie, clasping her hands earnestly.
As quoted in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow
Context: I am a witch, by which I mean that I am somebody who believes that the earth is sacred, and that women and women's bodies are one expression of that sacred being. My spirituality has always been linked to my feminism. Feminism is about challenging unequal power structures. So, it also means challenging inequalities in race, class, sexual preference. What we need to be doing is not just changing who holds power, but changing the way we conceive of power. There is the power we're all familiar with — power over. But there is another kind of power — power from within. For a woman, it is the power to be fertile either in terms of having babies or writing books or dancing or baking bread or being a great organizer. It is the kind of power that doesn't depend on depriving someone else.
“The word witch is related to the root of the word "willow," a very flexible tree.”
Bodhi Tree lecture (1999)
Context: The word witch is related to the root of the word "willow," a very flexible tree. Since ancient times witches have been known as those who can bend or shape fate. We twist the energies. The idea of witch became synonymous with wise woman, and with others who were herbalists and healers and keepers of the old traditions after the advent of Christianity. We were the ones who really knew the land and knew what grew there, and how to use it.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Context: "The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you".
“Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches”
Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6, on approaching the world of Aeaea
Context: "Here there are warlocks and mandragoras and witches," the navigation data log issued.
"When your machines start to go droll on you you're in trouble," Roadstrum growled. "I can get wise answers from my men. I don't need a machine for that."
Letter to José Correia da Serra (11 April 1820)
1820s
Context: The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. the tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is.
Address at Columbia University (1991)
Context: For many people, I've ceased to be a human being. I've become an issue, a bother, an "affair." … And has it really been so long since religions persecuted people, burning them as heretics, drowning them as witches, that you can't recognize religious persecution when you see it? … What is my single life worth? Despair whispers in my ear: "Not a lot." But I refuse to give in to despair … because … I know that many people do care, and are appalled by the … upside-down logic of the post-fatwa world, in which a … novelist can be accused of having savaged or "mugged" a whole community, becoming its tormentor (instead of its … victim) and the scapegoat for … its discontents…. (What minority is smaller and weaker than a minority of one?)
“Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease”
"Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," ll. 19-25
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.
From a letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts
1790s
Context: A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
“The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us.”
Source: Space Chantey (1968), Ch. 6
Context: The witch has been playing a semantic trick on us. We were already pretty salty animals when we came here! It is toy animals she has turned us into. We have been working against ourselves, trying to be men again, but to be her idea of men, since we live in her context. But she does not know real animals, or men. … Be you not toys any longer! Stir up the wild business in you. You have to be real animals before you can be men.
Source: Storm Over Warlock (1960), Chapter 15, “Dragon Slayer” (p. 164)
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
Oriana Fallaci. Interview with Ali Bhutto in Karachi, April 1972
“Benn, Shore and Foot were like the three witches in Macbeth.”
... In some darkened room of Transport House, on the very left of the building, they are busy boiling their own witches' brew. A dash of distortion here, an element of exaggeration there, all of course to be taken with a pinch of salt. And as they brew their myths, they delight in creating hubble, bubble, toil and trouble. ... [Benn] is probably the biggest bureaucrat and the wildest spendthrift that this country has ever known. But let us recognize the facts. Benn, Shore and Foot are using the Europe issue to brew up toil and trouble inside the Labour Party for their own ends. ...If there was a "No" vote in the referendum, we would find ourselves pulling out of Europe straight into the welcoming arms of the wild men of Labour's left.
Speech to the Conservative Group for Europe in Central Hall, Westminster (19 April 1975), quoted in The Times (21 April 1975), p. 4
Post-Prime Ministerial
“Barbara Cartland, witch and hag. Too much make-up, fascist bag.”
Tony Slattery, Whose Line is it Anyway? Series 5, Episode 3 (1993)
"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s
The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1857), Revenge
“Treat a child like a witch and you’ll have one.”
Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Chapter 12, “Village Circe” (p. 152)
Source: Novels, Vampires of Portlandia (2020), Chapter 15
Pope in Angola: Fight superstition https://www.scross.co.za/2009/03/pope-in-angola-fight-superstition/ (21 March 2009)
