Magic Trick Quotes

Love is like a magic trick
You know you are getting fooled, but still, you stand in line
And pay to see it again and again. ~ Yarro Rai

I realized that I could have done more for him if I had been in his house. I would have pushed morphine--large doses. Morphine disconnects the head from the body, makes the isthmus of a neck vanish and diminishes the awareness of suffering. It is like a magic trick: the head on the pillow, at peace, while the chest toils away. ~ Abraham Verghese

Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called the Pledge. The magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called the Turn. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it back. ~ Michael Caine

He makes me feel like I'm something to reveal, something in which to revel. I'm the reward at the end of his magic trick, exposed beneath the velvet cape. ~ Anonymous

Medicine's great magic trick is how it convinces us we're here saving lives when more often what we're doing is witnessing death. ~ Kevin Hazzard

My mom said:'Don't put your finger in your brother's ear! If you want to know how that quarter trick is done, go ask the magician.' So I tugged on The Great Arturo's pant leg until he finally taught me how. That was my first magic trick! I was five years old. ~ Autumn Morning Star

A saying, since a saying arises always from the mouths of adults when a person was just a listening child, was supposed to carry you back there, like a magic trick or a scrap of a story, or something with something else still sticking to it. ~ Sebastian Barry

If God had made a perfect world, it would be a magic trick, not creation, with no meaning or place for us to learn and create. Mankind is not yet ready for a perfect world. We do not know how to appreciate perfection. ~ Bernie Siegel

I have discovered the magic trick to increasing my daily word count and productivity. It's called a deadline. ~ A.D. Starrling

Runaways are romantic. The girls are waiflike with dyed ratty hair and baggy pants. They usually own a stray dog of the mutt variety and drag it along by a rope, plopping down in front of storefronts to beg for money from passersby. They're a mess. It is likely they'll charm you, make you think you're their best friend and savior only to end up using you and then they'll disappear. That's why they're romantic. They're there and then they're gone. Romance is always about people appearing in a flash out of nothing or people who are there and then suddenly are not. A magic trick. ~ Bett Williams

When I compare life to a dream I do not mean to denigrate it as some sort of meaningless fantasy. Life is too wonderful to be called an "illusion" unless we whisper the word in amazement, as we might when witnessing the most astonishing magic trick. What could be more magnificent than this glorious universe, in all its multifarious extravagance? Its awesome vastness and delicate detail. Its impersonal precision and intimate intensity. Its harsh necessities and lush sensuality. This dream of life is truly marvelous. ~ Timothy Freke

It's a little magic trick you can play on yourself. Whenever you feel sad and lonely, just smile and close your eyes. Do it as many times as you have to. ~ Genki Kawamura

Death was an inverse Big Bang; an impossible magic trick where everything had become nothing in the very same instant, where one state had been replaced so completely by another that no evidence of the first could be detected, and where the catalyst had been vaporized by the sheer shock of the new. ~ Belinda Bauer

Maybe it's not a lesson so much as it's a magic trick. You can make a little girl into anything if you say the right words. Take her apart until all that's left is her red, red heart thumping against the world. Stitch her up again real good. Now, maybe you get a woman. If you're lucky. If that's what you were after. Just as easy to end up with a blackbird or a circus bear or a coyote. Or a parrot, just saying what's said to you, doing what's done to you, copying until it comes so natural that even when you're all alone you keep on cawing hello pretty bird at the dark. ~ Catherynne M Valente

In all my time as an activist, I've never seen a single instance where the people instigating abuse, even in the worst possible cases, thought they were the 'bad guys'. There is always a righteous undertone.

Dehumanization works its mental magic, and turning the target into a 'villain' provides the attacker with the chance to be a 'hero'. You can rationalize doing all kinds of things to a symbol that you would never do to a human. The campaign becomes a false battle between good and evil, and tormenting someone is seen as a struggle over something much larger than either of you. That's the key ingredient in the magic trick that, in the abusers' minds, turns screaming at a game developer's father through a telephone into defending an entire artistic medium from censorship. ~ Zoe Quinn

You know? I believe this is the most precious rose I've ever received."

He gave me a slow, playful smile. "My magic trick was fairly impressive, too. Do you think Mephistopheles will take me on? I could practice. Actually," he said, taking my arm in his, adjusting his gait as I moved unsteadily beside him, "we ought to do an act together. What do you think of 'the Amazing Cressworths'? It's got a pleasant sound to it."

"Cressworth? Did you honestly combine our names? And why does your name go first?" I stared at him out of the corner of my eye, mouth curved upward despite my best efforts. "I think the most amazing part of our act would be not lulling the audience to sleep with your wit. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

The great and only possible dignity of man lies in his power deliberately to choose certain moral values by which to live as steadfastly as if he, too, like a character in a play, were immured against the corrupting rush of time. Snatching the eternal out of the desperately fleeting is the great magic trick of human existence. As far as we know, as far as there exists any kind of empiric evidence, there is no way to beat the beat the game of being against non-being, in which non-being is the predestined victor on realistic levels. ~ Tennessee Williams

I'm thinking that my best friend killed herself so slow it was almost like a magic trick, and other people let her do it. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

I always see your magic, Isaac. Did you know that? It's sure not a magic trick that makes me like you, right? From now on and forever
~ Ryohgo Narita

I look at Jane for a long time and a slow smile creeps over her face. Her whole face changes when she smiles - this eyebrow-lifting, perfect-teeth-showing, eye-crinkling smile I've either never seen or never noticed. She becomes pretty so suddenly that it's almost like a magic trick ~ John Green

Magic trick: to make people disappear, ask them to fulfill their promises. ~ Mason Cooley

Mass was like grand opera, a magic show with the most expensive props in town. And faith, a sleight of hand trick, in which one was both the magician and the audience; the deceiver and the deceived. Still, who could resist a good magic trick? ~ Kathleen Tessaro

Two Drink Mike enjoys dancing and knows a magic trick. Whereas, No Drink Mike enjoys biographies, and has serious opinions on wildlife. And Five Drink Mike ... dances with wildlife. ~ Mike Birbiglia

Magic is a trick, and the trick is to believe it's real. ~ Osman Welela

Now, tomorrow you got to put on a happy face, not for me, nor May, or anyone else, just for yourself. 'Cause that's a magic trick I learned a long time ago, if you look like you're happy, you soon get to be. ~ Lesley Pearse

No action in the present is an action planned with a view of its effect on the future. When the future, bearing its own events, arrives, its ancestry is then traced in a trancelike retrospect, at the end of which, their mouths and eyes wide with their astonishment, the people in a small place reveal themselves to be like children being shown the secrets of a magic trick. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

The universe is almost like a huge magic trick and scientists are trying to figure out how it does what it does. ~ Martin Gardner

I feel like my secret magic trick that separates me from a lot of my peers is the bravery to be vulnerable and truthful and honest. ~ Katy Perry

The goal is to really blur the line. Can you perform a magic trick in a way that someone doesn't think it's a magic trick but is something amazing they haven't seen before? Then they have to wrestle with reality. ~ Michael Carbonaro

The law is logical and is based on common sense. The trick was to argue the law in favor of your particular point of view without sounding biased. It was kind of like a magic trick: the best illusionist being the one who can best manipulate the logic to his or her advantage, all the while giving the illusion of impartiality. ~ Kenneth Eade

But there are no criminals here
Just people surviving against all odds
Multi and never ending circumstances
of racial repression
Class war accompanied
with post-traumatic stress
syndrome-like symptoms
Marshal law-like conditions
Magic trick tactics
transforming Brown and Black pearls into perils
with K-9's searching the perimeter
Face filled with hate
abra cadabra cop smiles
with a gun and a badge
The bullet is faster than the eye
Judges able to devour justice
with a single courtroom motion
not missing a crumb
Now you have your freedom
then you don't ~ Jonathan Daniel Gomez

A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat. ... We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick. ~ Jostein Gaarder

No, of course not. He'd been so distant lately. He wasn't even looking at her. Instead, he was staring down at a playing card in his hands, folding it. Nothing strange about that. Like their parents, Rhys and his twin brother, Max, were always fiddling with some kind of magic trick. He was particularly fond of making coins disappear. Sometimes she wished he could make her crush on him disappear just as easily, but first she'd have to admit it to him. That was so never going to happen. She'd seen the types of girls he and Max were attracted to, and plain, chubby tomboys need not apply. ~ Virna DePaul

People should get married because they have finally seen the folly of being single: "Oh, this is all just kind of a bad magic trick. I just keep bending over to reach for this wallet on a string. How much longer am I gonna do that?" ~ Jerry Seinfeld

Whenever I'm in need of inspiration and mantras, I go straight to simple affirmations. 'I am strong', 'I am brave', 'I can do this' and 'I'm awesome'. Whatever you put after 'I am', you will become. 'I am' are the two most powerful words, so make sure what you say after 'I am' is what you want to experience. It's like a magic trick. ~ Jason Mraz

Hey, Weenie Samdini!" Henry Farmer called as he waited to get on the school bus Sam would have been taking. "Why don't you do a magic trick and make yourself grow so you can k-k-kiss Stutter-girl?"
"It's frightening to think that one day his vote will count as much as yours or mine," Sam mused. ~ Cherie Bennett

But it's still a big fight to get the work you're really excited about onto shelves. And past that, convincing someone to pay you to do the work that you are most excited about is more than a trick, it's a fucking scam of a magic trick. ~ Brandon S. Graham

The brain accounts for only 2 percent of the body's volume, yet consumes 20 percent of the body's energy. A pearly gray, gelatinous, three-pound universe, this exceptional organ can map parsecs and plot the whereabouts of distant galaxies measured in quintillions of light-years. The brain accomplishes this magic trick without ever having to leave its ensorcelled ovoid cranial shell. From minuscule-wattage electrical currents crisscrossing and ricocheting within its walls, the brain can reconstruct a detailed diorama of how it imagines the Earth appeared four billion years ago. It can generate poetry so achingly beautiful that readers weep, hatred so intense that otherwise rational people revel in the torture of others, and love so oceanic that entwined lovers lose the boundaries of their physical beings. ~ Leonard Shlain

A magician creates magic and mesmerizes the audience. But it is a pantomime, and the audience knows that it's a ruse. It's in the name: a "magic trick". They play along when the magician tugs his sleeves to show there is nothing hidden within them, or that the top hat is empty of a rabbit, or eggs, or flowers. Beneath the façade there is only sleight of hand, wires and contraptions, misdirection at a key moment.
"But what the audience does not realize is that it's not always trickery. Or at least, not quite. ~ Laura Lam

I always feel that there's no violence in a movie - it's not real, it's a magic trick. Nobody is really dying. In fact, the people that die in my movies have gone on to become extremely successful! ~ Eli Roth

Some people see a magic trick and say, "Impossible!" They clap their hands, turn over their money, and forget about it ten minutes later. Other people ask how it worked. They go home, get into bed, toss and turn, wondering how it was done. It takes them a good night's sleep to forget all about it. And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they're the kind who won't rest until they've mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I'm that kind. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Movies started out as an extension of a magic trick, so making a spectacle is part of the game. ~ Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

So the particular strengths of the colon are beginning to become clear. A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to come. Like a well-trained magician's assistant, it pauses slightly to give you time to get a bit worried, and then efficiently whisks away the cloth and reveals the trick complete. ~ Lynne Truss

If I plug my estimates into the Magic Formula, and it comes out cheap, that's good. ~ Joel Greenblatt

...when my sons were the ages of those two leaping boys, they were so intimate it would have been hard to disentangle their separate natures. They used to play together without pause from the moment they opened their eyes in the morning to the moment they closed them again. Their play was a kind of shared trance in which they created whole imaginary worlds, and they were forever involved in games and projects whose planning and execution were as real to them as they were invisible to everyone else: sometimes I would move or throw away some apparently inconsequential item, only to be told that it was a sacred prop in the ongoing make-believe, a narrative which seemed to run like a magic river through our household, inexhaustible, and which they could exit and re-enter at will, moving over that threshold which no one else could see into another element. And then one day the river dried up: their shared world of imagination ceased, and the reason was that one of them - I can't even recall which one it was - stopped believing in it. In other words, it was nobody's fault; but all the same it was brought home to me how much of what was beautiful in their lives was the result of a shared vision of things that strictly speaking could not have been said to exist. ~ Rachel Cusk

The geologist, six years ago now, hadn't defied anything to climb the hill. He'd had his own powerful magic
the ordinary magic that extraordinarily interested people always have. ~ Elizabeth Knox

The Bodleian above anything else made Oxford what it was ... There was something incommunicably grand about it, something difficult to understand unless you had spent your evenings there or walked past it on the way to celebrate the boat race, a magic that came from ignoring it a thousand times a day and then noticing its overwhelming beauty when you came out of a tiny alley and it caught you unexpectedly. A library
it didn't sound like much, but it was what made Oxford itself. The greatest library in the world. ~ Charles Finch

I know 'Vikings' isn't really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo. ~ Madchen Amick

Fear is like a ten-cent magician. If you watch the trick a couple of times, you see the flaws and you know how the magician is doing it. But the first time, that same trick looks good. When we're scared, we don't always think things through. We react. It's human nature. Fear can make the wrong decision feel right. By then, it's too late. ~ Kami Garcia

If there really was one true god, it should be a singular composite of every religion's gods, an uber-galactic super-genius, and the ultimate entity of the entire cosmos. If a being of that magnitude ever wrote a book, then there would only be one such document; one book of God. It would be dominant everywhere in the world with no predecessors or parallels or alternatives in any language, because mere human authors couldn't possibly compete with it. And you wouldn't need faith to believe it, because it would be consistent with all evidence and demonstrably true, revealing profound morality and wisdom far beyond contemporary human capacity. It would invariably inspire a unity of common belief for every reader. If God wrote it, we could expect no less. But what we see instead is the very opposite of that. ~ Aron Ra

For these are true boys and they draw dirt to them as if by magic. ~ Philippa Gregory

The ancients had instincts and abilities that are lost to civilization today. Magic was real. It lived inside the shamans. Inside the priests. They passed it on from generation to generation. You have the dregs of that power in you. It it not the strength that it was, but you can access it. But to do so you must be willing to travel deep into your own darkness and be open to risk. To pull from the earth's energy. ~ M.J. Rose

Science is best defined as a careful, disciplined, logical search for knowledge about any and all aspects of the universe, obtained by examination of the best available evidence and always subject to correction and improvement upon discovery of better evidence. What's left is magic. And it doesn't work. ~ James Randi

Filmmaking is a difficult process. There are the logistics of making a film. You have to do your part, and then change the entire thing around to do someone else's part. A lot of the magic is lost, in between that, and you have to figure out how to get it back. ~ Aaron Eckhart

Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds. ~ Catherynne M Valente

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Careful there, Sera. When you're upset, your wall cracks. I'm getting a whiff of your magic." He inhaled long and deep. "Mmm. Delicious." He shot her a roguish smile. Which she ignored. Or pretended to, anyway. ~ Ella Summers

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success. ~ James Dyson

Patanjali says that we can meditate on anything that our heart desires. The important thing is not what we meditate on, but more that we meditate. And then gradually to meditate more and more on what corresponds to the innermost longing of our heart. The practice of meditation ... gradually works its magic in stilling the mind. (42) ~ Ravi Ravindra

The trick is to find that one person who can give it back as good as they can take it. ~ Sally Thorne

Over and over. They be making me remember everythings. Me old songs, they just be natural. But now they be stuffing new things into me and this poor head hurts horrid. ~ Lois Lowry

We've seen firsthand the footprints of the Mordant's treachery. ~ Karen Azinger

She is the closest thing to magic. ~ Giovannie De Sadeleer

In Chandigarh if there is something which cannot be missed that is experiencing sunset at sukhna lake. Thousands of people around and still you can meet your inner soul. This Orange magic bless you with more energy, postivity, coherent vision and lots of support. ~ Anjnay Sharma

Every generation has their own great players. Who's to say that anyone's better than Cheryl Miller or Nancy Lieberman? Whose anyone to say Michael Jordan is better than Oscar Robertson or Magic Johnson or Larry Bird? Every generation has its great player. There's never going to be one player that's so above and beyond anyone else. ~ Diana Taurasi

I have no magic formula. The only way I know to win is through hard work. ~ Don Shula

When we blaze, when we fight, when we rejoice, then I am all us, for that is all we are. When I am ... afraid ... we do not understand, do not like these things. We are me. It is ... frightening, having to be me. ~ Kate Griffin

If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blooms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me. ~ Robert McCammon

My sister had taught me to look at the world that way, as a place that glitters, as a place where the calls of the crickets and the crows and the wind are everyday occurrences that also happen to be magic. ~ Cynthia Kadohata

Part of the magic of the lake is that it isn't home – it's away, and away allows us to see the rhythms and dimensions of our lives more clearly. So it doesn't necessarily work for us to live here at the lake, but I do want the way of living that I've tasted here to inform and ground how I live everywhere, all year long. The lake gives me something to aspire to – a reminder, a rhythm, a pattern. Simple, connected to God and His world and people, uncomplicated by lots of stuff. ~ Shauna Niequist

The trick to happiness wasn't in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one's life would produce many future moments to anticipate. ~ Brandon Sanderson

So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world. We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with - born with ten of them. We're going to use our fingers. We're going to touch this with our fingers. And we have invented a new technology called multi-touch, which is phenomenal. It works like magic. ~ Steve Jobs

Zoroaster said, when in doubt abstain; but this does not always apply. At cards, when in doubt take the trick. ~ Josh Billings

Every song you write you think is the last one you're going to manage. You put everything you've got into the song, and you've twisted it and pulled at it and dug in and found a way to complete it. To get another one is the trick. ~ Jakob Dylan

What were you chanting when you gave me your blood?"
"More of my vampire magic. I cast a healing spell to aid the powers of my blood."
She sniffled, her nose stuffy. "It was better than Vicodin."
"Vicodin?"
"A painkiller from my world."
"A killer of pain. Did you love him?" The words were growled.A burst of unexpected humor gave her strength. "No. In fact, he was hard to shake. He, uh, stalked me, that kind of thing. I had to pretend he didn't
exist."
Nicolai kissed her temple and relaxed against her. ~ Gena Showalter

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ... and it's magic and wonderful and strange. ~ Neil Gaiman

We've all got it coming to us. The trick is to make sure we are ready when it does. ~ Tim Baker

That would do the trick," he said hoarsely. "Jesus, Harper, I don't understand why we don't have guys following us from town to town just to watch you do that."
"Because I've never done it for anyone but you," I said. "You don't think I'd say something like that to anyone else, do you?"
"Please," he said. "Please do that for me. And no one else. ~ Charlaine Harris

His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter! ~ Roberto Bolano

It was karma, it was kismet, it was magic. It doesn't matter how it happened, just that it did. ~ Shannon Hale

Shower on him every blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes, and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

There are things no magic can destroy, for they are magic in themselves. ~ Cassandra Clare

Aladdin rates high for fuckability and marriage material. I mean, imagine the possibilities for sex in public places with that magic carpet. ~ Keeley Bates

In Chaos Magic, beliefs are not seen as ends in themselves, but as tools for creating desired effects. ~ Peter J. Carroll

A great magician is as divine as God and his stage is as majestic as the paradise. ~ Amit Kalantri