Magic Realism Quotes

The air was so damp that fish could have come in through doors and swum out the windows, floating through the atmosphere in the rooms. One morning Ursula woke up feeling that she was reaching her end in a placid swoon and she had already asked them to take her to Father Antonio Isabel, when Santa Sofia de la Piedad discovered that her back was paved with leeches. She took them off one by one, crushing them with a firebrand before they bled her to death. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The heat inside me became liquid fire. ~ Lindsey S. Frantz

Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season ~ Clarice Lispector

When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real. ~ Salman Rushdie

With the motto "do what you will," Rabelais gave himself permission to do anything he damn well pleased with the language and the form of the novel; as a result, every author of an innovative novel mixing literary forms and genres in an extravagant style is indebted to Rabelais, directly or indirectly. Out of his codpiece came Aneau's Alector, Nashe's Unfortunate Traveller, López de Úbeda's Justina, Cervantes' Don Quixote, Béroalde de Verville's Fantastic Tales, Sorel's Francion, Burton's Anatomy, Swift's Tale of a Tub and Gulliver's Travels, Fielding's Tom Jones, Amory's John Buncle, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, the novels of Diderot and maybe Voltaire (a late convert), Smollett's Adventures of an Atom, Hoffmann's Tomcat Murr, Hugo's Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Southey's Doctor, Melville's Moby-Dick, Flaubert's Temptation of Saint Anthony and Bouvard and Pecuchet, Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Frederick Rolfe's ornate novels, Bely's Petersburg, Joyce's Ulysses, Witkiewicz's Polish jokes, Flann O'Brien's Irish farces, Philip Wylie's Finnley Wren, Patchen's tender novels, Burroughs's and Kerouac's mad ones, Nabokov's later works, Schmidt's fiction, the novels of Durrell, Burgess (especially A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers), Gaddis and Pynchon, Barth, Coover, Sorrentino, Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Brossard's later works, the masterpieces of Latin American magic realism (Paradiso, The Autumn of the Patriarch, Three Trapped Tigers, I the Supreme, Avalovara, Terra Nostra, Palin ~ Steven Moore

A masterwork. A particularly American magic realism that touches the heart of race and childhood in our country; it's 100 Years of Solitude for an entire generation of American Baby Boomers, and deserves the widest possible audience. ~ Ellen Kushner

The trees are bedecked with snow, the air is perfumed; how sweet, how dark the sultry fragrance. Forever hypnotising, always haunting. I want to inhale the fragrance of your skin, drink from your open mouth. ~ Suzy Davies

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods. ~ Alice Hoffman

The feelings and the memories and the perceptions in me are my own, they are terrible and secret and if I can turn them out, if I can display them on canvas ... or even on my skin if I must ... " He turned his head and looked at her. "Then they are special. Do you see? I create from my secrets, from the halls in my soul. ~ Kendra L. Saunders

The piper never knew we were watchers.....Sounds echoed - sounds of a Scottish love song. They echoed through the silence, soft and melancholy, as he kept time with his foot, and the metal of the bagpipes glinted, through faint moonshine, and lifting fog ~ Suzy Davies

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me. ~ Sam Neill

He never looked better, nor had he been loved more, not had the breeding of his animals been wilder. There was a slaughtering of so many cows, pigs and chickens for the endless parties that the ground in the courtyard turned black and muddy with so much blood. It was an eternal execution of bones and innards, a mud pit of leftovers, and they had to keep exploding dynamite bombs all the time so that the buzzards would not pluck out the guests' eyes. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house. ~ Ben Okri

My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day. ~ Angela Carter

Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass.
Neither one had spoken a word. ~ Toni Morrison

More interestingly, it could be argued that, if fantasy (and debatably the literature of the fantastic as a whole) has a purpose other than to entertain, it is to show readers how to perceive; an extension of the argument is that fantasy may try to alter readers' perception of reality. Of course, quack religions (etc.) make similar attempts, but a major difference is that, while the latter attempt to convert people to their codified way of thinking, the best fantasy introduces its readers into a playground of rethought perception, where there are no restrictions other than those of the human imagination. In some modes of the fantastic – e.g., magic realism and surrealism – the attempt to alter the reader's perception is overt, but most full-fantasy texts have at their core the urge to change the reader; that is, full fantasy is by definition a subversive literary form. ~ John Clute

Look, this isn't magic realism. This is not another story about superstitious island people and their primitive beliefs. No. You don't get off that easy. This is a story about people as real as you are, and as real as I once was before I became a bodiless thing floating up here in the sky. You might as well consider a more urgent question; not whether you believe this story or not, but whether this story is about the kinds of people you have never taken the time to believe in. ~ Kei Miller

A lot of the time, when we think about the past, there's a slightly smug patronizing attitude that kicks in. We know so much more than our ancestors did. We make it a joke: can you believe that in Tang dynasty China they thought that ghosts of soldiers, if they weren't buried, would live in some limbo forever, floating above the battlefield in their unburied bodies?

There's always the risk, or the reality, of that slight pulling back, for the modern reader, from connecting with or understanding the past. We always have this space between the foolishness, from our point of view, of what they thought of the world, and the correctness of our understanding of it.

What the fantastic lets me do, along with the other things that we've discussed, is make the world be as my characters believe it to be. When I do that, when I make the reader understand it, the reader is there, the ghosts are there above that battlefield. They're actually there. You read a book that takes that matter-of-factly. That's one of the definitions of magic realism, by the way: the world is presented as the characters believe it to be, without any sense that the worldview is quaint.

The strength of this, for me, is enormous, because it removes that smugness from the reader who's willing to go there, to be immersed in it. You accept the way the world is, the way the characters do, because that's what you've got. That's one of the things the fantastic gives me.

Or, I'll ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

Magic is what you make it. ~ Theo Sage

So many people mean nothing to us, we pass one another by without acknowledgement, without comprehending the gifts many have to offer, if only we slowed down and realised we're not all so different. My front door isn't open to everyone, but I can tell a good one when I see them just like I know trouble when it's staring me in the face. ~ Tami Egonu

Being a woman is inherently uncanny. Your humanity is liminal; your body is forfeit; your mind is doubted as a matter of course. You exist in the periphery, and I think many women writers can't help but respond to that state. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

He wishes he were a skilled poet, it would fit his chosen image perfectly; the poor, tragic, tortured artiste. But he has no talent for words, neither for paints nor music; his uselessness is tremendously total. ~ Curtis Ackie

The sea is rushing in now as unconsciousness does.I can see a chord, hear gospel songs as we hoist the sails.The sails are a soft white bird. We are airborne. We are primitive. ~ Suzy Davies

Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around. ~ Terri Windling

The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism ... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner. ~ Sam Neill

Bring your army, little god! My sword is hungry! ~ Ilona Andrews

You're not powerful enough to do anything like that," said Tiffany. "You know, you are right," said the Queen. "That kind of physical magic is, indeed, very hard. But I can make you think I've done the most ... terrible things. And that, little girl, is all I need to do. Would you like to beg for mercy now? You may not be able to later. ~ Terry Pratchett

You will find yourself, as he did. But that will not mean it is easy. There are few things easy in life that are worth the doing. ~ Mette Ivie Harrison

Magic is a heartless bitch, and she's had me by the throat for years. ~ Devon Monk

On Turgenev: He knew from Lavrov that I was an enthusiastic admirer of his writings; and one day, as we were returning in a carriage from a visit to Antokolsky's studio, he asked me what I thought of Bazarov. I frankly replied, 'Bazaraov is an admirable painting of the nihilist, but one feels that you did not love him as mush as you did your other heroes.'

'On the contrary, I loved him, intensely loved him,' Turgenev replied, with an unexpected vigor. 'When we get home I will show you my diary, in which I have noted how I wept when I had ended the novel with Bazarov's death.'

Turgenev certainly loved the intellectual aspect of Bazarov. He so identified himself with the nihilist philosophy of his hero that he even kept a diary in his name, appreciating the current events from Bazarov's point of view. But I think that he admired him more than he loved him. In a brilliant lecture on Hamlet and Don Quixote, he divided the history makers of mankind into two classes, represented by one or the other of these characters. 'Analysis first of all, and then egotism, and therefore no faith,--an egotist cannot even believe in himself:' so he characterized Hamlet. 'Therefore he is a skeptic, and never will achieve anything; while Don Quixote, who fights against windmills, and takes a barber's plate for the magic helmet of Mambrino (who of us has never made the same mistake?), is a leader of the masses, because the masses always follow those who, taking no heed of the s ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

On the short walk to the front past the others, either bowing or kneeling or whirling or howling, I feel glad that my life is this way; so full of jarring experience. Sometimes you feel that life is full and beautiful, all these worlds, all these people, all these experiences, all this wonder. You never know when you will encounter magic. Some solitary moment in a park can suddenly burst open with a spray of preschool children in high-vis vests, hand in hand; maybe the teacher will ask you for directions, and the children will look at you, curious and open, and you'll see that they are perfect. ~ Russell Brand

You don't have to be Magic to be special. You're already special, you're you. ~ Magic Johnson

At night, Henrietta felt like magic. And at night, magic felt like it might be a terrible thing. After dark, it felt like anything could happen. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Your head is incredibly hard…you'll be fine."
"So much for bedside manner. You didn't think about cushioning my fall before I hit the ground?"
"Please, would you jump in front of an oak tree to stop it falling?"
"You're comparing me to a falling tree? ~ Jane Cousins

This is the Scroll of Thoth. Herein are set down the magic words by which Isis raised Osiris from the dead. Oh! Amon-Ra
Oh! God of Gods
Death is but the doorway to new life
We live today-we shall live again
In many forms shall we return-Oh, mighty one. ~ John L. Balderston

The role of capitalist ideology is not to make an explicit case for something in the way that propaganda does, but to conceal the fact that the operations of capital do not depend on any sort of subjectively assumed belief. It is impossible to conceive of fascism or Stalinism without propaganda - but capitalism can proceed perfectly well, in some ways better, without anyone making a case for it. ~ Mark Fisher

I looked at him. You really need to work on your threats. I can't tell if you're threatening me or inviting me for tea. ~ Ilona Andrews

He could be distracted, still, by beauty, by the wonder of a stroke of sunlight. Perhaps at such times he made himself open to wizardry-or conversely, was as warded and safe at such moments as Ynefel at its strongest. Perhaps threats simply slid past his attention and he made himself immune. ~ C.J. Cherryh

I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. ~ John F. Kennedy

CLEAR THINKERS REQUIRED Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the three-million-member-strong U.S. Chamber of Commerce, organizes very popular small dinners and invites a wide variety of guests. The express purpose is the exchange of ideas. Tom brings together twenty titans of industry and empowers each with just one minute to talk on a key issue. Then Tom makes his summation. He connects all the dots in a masterful fashion, tying together what everyone has said. Chamber board member Barry Appleton says, "It is this distilled knowledge of clear and concise thinking that is the magic that keeps everyone coming back for more. ~ Darcy Rezac

As time passes, the cast and crew go the way of all flesh, though their celluloid echoes remain--walking, talking, fighting, fucking. After enough time, every person you see onscreen will have died, transformed through the magic of cinema into a collection of visible memories: light on a screen, pixels on a videotape, information on a DVD. We bring them back every time we start a movie, and they live again, reflected in our eyes. It's a cruel sort of immortality, I guess, though it probably beats the alternative. ~ Gemma Files

When nightfall weaves its way through the New York Public Library, it is nothing shy of magic. Long stretched of sunlight on marble morph from white to yellow to pink to orange to red, the dim slowly, completely. Shadows yawn and stretch awake. Eighty-five miles of books on shelves blink away their daytime sleep, for book are often nocturnal creatures, ready to play. To roam. To hunt. ~ Kristin O'Donnell Tubb

Keats mourned that the rainbow, which as a boy had been for him a magic thing, had lost its glory because the physicists had found it resulted merely from the refraction of the sunlight by the raindrops. Yet knowledge of its causation could not spoil the rainbow for me. I am sure that it is not given to man to be omniscient. There will always be something left to know, something to excite the imagination of the poet and those attuned to the great world in which they live (p. 64) ~ Robert Frost

Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes. ~ Michael Scott

My family is a praying family, a Christian family. ~ Magic Johnson

Starting now, you're just starting to see a glimmer of what the idea of West will mean. So right now, at this age and with this visibility and with the skill sets that Kim is now giving me, I think I have a good chance of success in building something that has longevity, high integrity, high success rate, and is very fulfilling, not only for me creatively but also in adding fulfillment to people's lives. Adding ease. Adding wonder. Adding magic. ~ Kanye West

What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web ... ~ David Abram

Funny, she had all that ink on her skin to protect her from ghosts and magic, and he were damn sure doing what he could to protect her outside that, but weren't anything he could do to keep her safe from the memories. He ~ Stacia Kane

Just as there are different types of stars - red and white and brown and blue and dwarf and giant and all that lot - there are different types of Quests, and if we determine what type you face, we shall have a much easier time managing the whole business. We're doing very well. Already we know that Prince Myrrh is an Endgame Object Type W - that's Wonderful, since we have yet to see if he will be any Use in governing. He sleeps suspended in a Theseus-type narrative matrix, however he does seem to have some gravitational pull on events, which is unusual for a T-Type. After all, we still remember him even after all these years. It's far easier to forget something than to remember it. Remembering takes all kinds of magic. No one knows who he is or what he looks like or where to find him, and yet we all know of him. We all know he sleeps in an unopenable box on an unbreakable bower. That's a frightfully strong E.K.T. Field for one little creature! ~ Catherynne M Valente

Um um um um um. This business of - this business about marketing yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. Unless we're allowed to think that that's - that that's it. That that's the point, that that's the goal, you know? And that's the reason we're here - because that's so empty. And you as a writer know that it's - if you as a writer think that your job is to get as many people to like your stuff and think well of you as possible ... And I could, we could both, name writers that it's pretty obvious that's their motivation? It kills the work. Each time. That that's maybe 50 percent of it, but it misses all the magic. And it misses, it doesn't let you be afraid. Or it doesn't, like, let you like make yourself be, be vulnerable. Or ... nah, see, I'm not ... Anyway, anyway. ~ David Foster Wallace

However, the real beauty is not in the words themselves, but in the listener that has the power to understand them. ~ Luis Marques

Oh yes, Sean Kowalski. Your amazing kisses have made all rational thought fly out of my besotted brain. If only you could fill me with your magic penis, I know we'll fall madly in love and live happily ever after. ~ Shannon Stacey

Long division won't help you exorcise a demon. ~ Stephanie A. Gillis

Why does there appear to be so little magic in the world these days? It is because people have stopped believing in it or lose touch with it as they grow up. It is because we have become so sophisticated and lost our ancient and natural roots. It is because religion, science and education have taught us that magic does not exist. That even supposing it does exist – which to many is far too big an 'if' – then it couldn't possibly work. Their self-fulfilling sophistry complete, they then turn round and say 'There you are you see, there is no magic in the world, just as we said.' And we and the world are all the poorer as a result of this. I mean, what are we left with? Santa, the Easter Bunny, Harry Potter and the Tooth Fairy. ~ H.M. Forester

Remain in wonder if you want the mysteries to open up for you. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers.
And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. ~ Osho

She's far from ordinary;
she's a rare breed,
a black rose,
a deep soul,
a gypsy heart,
a bright star.
Or you could simply say,
she's magic. ~ Melody Lee

The painting is not on a surface, but on a plane which is imagined. It moves in a mind. It is not there physically at all. It is an illusion, a piece of magic, so that what you see is not what you see. ~ Philip Guston

Anyone who thinks this world is without magic, hasn't been to a library. ~ Amy Fellner Dominy

I think of writing as a partnership with the reader. My goal is to feed their imagination, but only partially. If you give them everything, you limit their ability. It's borderline insulting. The key with description is to give the reader just enough so they experience what's going on, but leave a little out so they're encouraged to fill in the blanks. This is where the magic happens. Let them breathe life into your story in a way only they can. ~ S.J. Pierce

If you'd have told me two weeks ago that one day I'd be part of a not-so-merry band of Necros seeking to exterminate a couple of other magic-born gangs, I'd have given you directions to the strait-jacket factory. ~ David Estes

Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognizing it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in various disguises. Harry ~ J.K. Rowling

I like it when characters are some combination of appealing and maybe flawed or self-interested. I think in terms of scenes, and what I want a scene to achieve, and I think that the psychological realism arises from that. ~ Curtis Sittenfeld

There is no God, and man is his prophet," replied Niels bitterly and rather sadly.
"Exactly," scoffed Hjerrild. "After all, atheism is unspeakably tame. Its end and aim is nothing but a disillusioned humanity. The belief in a God who rules everything and judges everything is humanity's last great illusion, and when that is gone, what then? Then you are wiser; but richer, happier? I can't see it."
"But don't you see," exclaimed Niels Lyhne, "that on the day when men are free to exult and say: 'There is no God!' on that day a new heaven and a new earth will be created as if by magic. Then and not till then will heaven be a free infinite space instead of a spying, threatening eye. Then the earth will be ours and we the earth's, when the dim world of bliss or damnation beyond has burst like a bubble. The earth will be our true mother country, the home of our hearts, where we dwell, not as strangers and wayfarers a short time, but all our time. Think what intensity it will give to life, when everything must be concentrated within it and nothing left for a hereafter. The immense stream of love that is now rising up to the God of men's faith will bend to earth again and flow lovingly among all those beautiful human virtues with which we have endowed and embellished the godhead in order to make it worthy of our love. Goodness, justice, wisdom--who can name them all? Don't you see what nobility it will give men when they are free to live their life and die their death, witho ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen

What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Another revolution around the sun and I was still no closer to getting home. Laying on my lumpy mattress in my blood-stained shirt and dusty jeans with my arm over my eyes, I tried to imagine I was lying on Violet's couch. Clara paced in her cell and I let myself believe it was Violet, padding around the kitchen. My memory kicked up the image of her in tiny cotton shorts and a baggy Beatles t-shirt making coffee. My chest swelled and more than ever I wished I could see her face again, hear her voice. ~ Allison Sipe

It is imperative that you have no further contact with Archer Cross."
I knew all of that. But there was something about having it actually said out loud that physically hurt. "I get it," I said,looking down. "I'm a demon, he's an Eye. If we got together, think of how awkward family holidays would be. Magic and daggers flying around, knocking over the Christmas tree... ~ Rachel Hawkins

Low and cold, Nick said, "Betray me."
Alan's head snapped up. "What?"
"Betray me," Nick said again, still in that terrible toneless demon's voice, hands clenching on the kitchen counter so hard Mae thought it would break. "Turn me over to the magicians, take the magic, do whatever you think you need to do, I do not care. But don't leave. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Childhood does not last forever,' said Juniper. 'Although I believe the childish soul can endure for an eternity. ~ Erin Forbes

Curran strode toward me, eyes blazing. "If I let her go, I'll need a replacement. Want to volunteer for the job."
He looked like he wouldn't be taking no for an anser. I swiped Slayer from its sheath and backed away from the edge of the roof. "And be girlfriend number twenty-three soon to be dumped in favor of girlfriend number twenty-four who has slightly bigger boobs? I don't think so."
He kept coming. "Oh Yeah?"
"Yeah, you get these beautiful women, make them dependent on you, and then you dump them. Well, this time a woman left you first, and your enormous ego can't deal with it. And to think that I hoped we could talk like reasonable adults. If we were the last two people on Earth, I'd find myself a moving island so I could get the hell away from you. ~ Ilona Andrews

Zen is magic. It gives you the key to open the miraculous. And the miraculous is in you and the key is also in you. ~ Osho

I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Magic was a living thing---that, everyone knew---but to Kell it felt like more, like a friend, like family. It was, after all, a part of him (much more than it was a part of most) and he couldn't help feeling like it knew what he was saying, what he was feeling, not only when he summoned it, but always, in every heartbeat and every breath. He was, after all, Antari. ~ V.E Schwab

The illusion of magic is an idealistic fantasy; it exists only in the imagination of the spectator. ~ Paul LePaul

a book of magic should be written by a practising magician, rather than a theoretical magician or a historian of magic. ~ Susanna Clarke