Magical Realism Quotes

Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks [...] He wonders if the poem of the circus could possibly be bottled. ~ Erin Morgenstern

Dreams are memories.
Memories are dreams.
But my time with you hasn't become a dream just yet.
Because the sensation of your kisses
keep me from sleep.
I'm in love,
God help me, I'm in love. ~ F.K. Preston

At times all you need is a bottle of fine old wine, a mellifluous piece of music playing in the background and a good book to spend the entire night in a magical bliss! ~ Avijeet Das

I think that it's important to try to keep reality. I think that Gabriel Garcia Marquez speaks a lot about reality in his magical realism. So I don't think we have to be hyper-realistic. But we have to understand the pressures that undergird the lives of the characters within that novel. ~ Walter Mosley

Krisztina played the song. It was a lament made of eight notes, repeated. It was an empty melody. It sounded elemental too; it made Krisztina think of the snow falling beyond the window and across Budapest. She wondered if it was snowing in England. Alice's mother would be here again later, all the way from London. There was so much grief. They were mourning her little girl before she had gone. Without realising she heard these words making themselves part of the song. She played what she could, her head down, her face solemn and determined. She went back to the start, and felt the world falling away, the tears drying on her face. She heard the words coming, falling like the luminous snow. After a few minutes she looked across what seemed like a huge divide to Alice on the bed and faltered. In the house of the body, the lights were being extinguished, one by one. The floors were now bare, the walls unadorned, all sound hollow and lost; all that remained was the ghost of what was, the glimmer of the melody, the tune, the song of a life lived and lost in three minutes. ~ Simon Avery

The underlying melody via every rock, plant, animal, sky and star, inside the water, from the dirt, through the light: only love lasts. ~ Melina Sempill Watts

Carry on the Flame to a new dawn I am with you.
~the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea ~ Jodine Turner

It is easier to start a war than to end it. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Four years ago the clocks started turning back. I open my eyes and see nothing. I feel nothing below or above me. I feel the absence of things. The absence of my flesh, my bones, my body, my mind. All that is left is awareness. I see nothing but the absence of colour. It's not a black darkness. It's simply nothing. The interior of a black hole. I recall news of a black hole lingering along the edges of our solar system. All that time ago. Four years ago. When the clocks started turning back. I hear nothing. Until there is a something. A small thing. A voice. I listen. There are more voices. The sounds are human. How long has it been since I've heard a human? The sounds scratch along my now present attention. They carve into my hearing. They are horrid, wretched things. Voices screaming. Growing loud and desperate. How many voices? Billions. This is the birth of our species. We are born screaming. It's all we know to do. We have screamed for eternity. Within this empty space. ~ F.K. Preston

I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice - their humor, their fatalism, their ... well, that over-used term 'magical realism.' It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much, we don't know what it means anymore. ~ Jessica Hagedorn

I can't remember what I've done with my lingerie. I look in the containers under my bed, as if my sexual self has been relegated to the wrong side of the mattress. I imagine my husband's sexuality down there too, our shadow selves making love deep in our unconscious as we cuddle above the mattress as brother and sister. ~ Jalina Mhyana

She kissed him first, and all the rest followed. ~ Alice Hoffman

I no longer feel the need to see and sense more than I've already experienced. I just want so desperately to hang on what I have. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Obviously all religions get corrupted by man. The initial ideas are interesting but once they get organized they seem to become about politics and other things and they get misinterpreted ... Have faith but do the work. Live your life right. Dont expect things to happen. Thats why Im put off by magical realism. ~ Matt Dillon

We could scan each car for terrorists

and lovers she could lean into

my camouflage her head resting on woven trees.

When they come for her body she could run deep
into my uniform

into the forest of me
where they could never find her. ~ Jalina Mhyana

When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced ~ SL Hulen

The truth is there isn't anything to me at all. All I know is that I can't sleep well, I can't dream well and I'm quite in love with you. That's all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it's not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That's when I realise you're dead. That's when I remember you've been gone for years. That's when I remember I'm awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever. ~ F.K. Preston

Coincidence leads to talk and talk to speculation and speculation to rumor and rumor to belief. And belief makes the supernatural real. ~ Lynne M. Hinkey

Where do they go, these dreams of mine? Do they live? Do they die? Do they fall? Do they fly? ~ F.K. Preston

To master magical realism, one must make the real seem unreal but, more importantly, make the unreal seem real. ~ Kevin Ansbro

Chocolate is a kitchen witch's secret weapon. It makes friends easily, soothes troubled spirits, and is conducive to romance. When nothing else works, go with chocolate.
- Sadie Trevalyn's Book of Kitchen Witchery ~ Alyssa Goodnight

This is the magical realism of NAFTA - Mexico, the birthplace of corn, is now importing surplus corn from el Norte - millions of tons driving the price down so campesinos can't afford to grow it. Exporting people and importing corn. It is backwards, no? ~ John Vaillant

He is looking down into the toilet bowl. He sees a bright shiny red ball, about the size of his fist, covered with blood and bobbing jauntily in the yellowed water. It throbs in time
with Ernest's pulse. It is his heart. ~ J. Mulrooney

I wanted to kiss you for a long time, and I decided that might be my only chance. I've been miserable ever since." Troy ran his fingers along her jaw. "It was almost better when I didn't know how it felt to kiss you. ~ Cindi Madsen

Magical realism is a blending of the unusual or supernatural into an otherwise ordinary setting. And, to me, this perfectly describes the South. 'The Sugar Queen' involves a lot of magical happenings, but in a very down-home Southern setting. It's full of things that could almost be true. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

So now would probably be the wrong time to tell you I rented that boxing movie with the hot guys, planning to watch it on mute?" Ashlyn asked.
"Well, as long as I'm invited to watch it with you, I see nothing wrong with that. ~ Cindi Madsen

Some years ago I had a conversation with a man who thought that writing and editing fantasy books was a rather frivolous job for a grown woman like me. He wasn't trying to be contentious, but he himself was a probation officer, working with troubled kids from the Indian reservation where he'd been raised. Day in, day out, he dealt in a concrete way with very concrete problems, well aware that his words and deeds could change young lives for good or ill.
I argued that certain stories are also capable of changing lives, addressing some of the same problems and issues he confronted in his daily work: problems of poverty, violence, and alienation, issues of culture, race, gender, and class...
"Stories aren't real," he told me shortly. "They don't feed a kid left home in an empty house. Or keep an abusive relative at bay. Or prevent an unloved child from finding 'family' in the nearest gang."
Sometimes they do, I tried to argue. The right stories, read at the right time, can be as important as shelter or food. They can help us to escape calamity, and heal us in its aftermath. He frowned, dismissing this foolishness, but his wife was more conciliatory. "Write down the names of some books," she said. "Maybe we'll read them."
I wrote some titles on a scrap of paper, and the top three were by Charles de lint – for these are precisely the kind of tales that Charles tells better than anyone. The vital, necessary stories. The ones that can change and heal young live ~ Terri Windling

I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you're too busy living. ~ F.K. Preston

For these were the days when Time was still the horizon of beauty and had not yet begun its slow inexorable destructions. ~ J. Mulrooney

Half asleep, he wondered whether that might not have been his happiest day ever, the last, perfect day swelling with the immensity of his secret intent, secret creation - the day before everything changed - the day before he realized, for the first time, yet with absolute finality, just how small his private immensity really was when measured against that other vast, dark, impersonal immensity, call it God, or history, or simply life. ~ Olga Grushin

When everything is said and done, the only thing that really matters is the quality of the soul you build during the life you're given. ~ Kayt C. Peck

My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane. ~ F.K. Preston

Although I've always been easily led by my imagination, I was, and I remain, a rational person. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Realism can break a writer's heart. ~ Salman Rushdie

Demon," the woman spat onto the road. "Well, girl, thank you. I grant no one's wishes and so you mark me 'demon.' I grant no wishes and I do as I see fit to be done. I will not answer to you, girl, nor to any one of yours, but I will always look. I am not the one who turns away. ~ Tamara Rendell

The critics are like tourists who return from a trip saying they've "done" Machu Picchu: "Okay, we've done magical realism," so now we can throw it out. ~ Gore Vidal

The relentless onslaught of this stupefying imagery that pounds our inner landscapes flat, a carpet-bombing of the mind. The language of the world, that overwhelms us. ~ Alan Moore

All that is required of you is an open mind and a little patience. ~ F.K. Preston

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way. ~ F.K. Preston

But because I do not wish to be remembered (if I will be remembered) as a self-indulgent fantasist, I'll skip the purple patch for now, however much I wish to write it. I need to make amends for my indifference, for having turned my back on the world in favor of the beauties of the way. I'll try to study cruelty (I regret my own) and render it in more familiar terms. ~ Norman Lock

It's as predictable as the tide and the moon. It ebbs and flows. Death comes and it goes."
- THE WICKED DEEP ~ Shea Ernshaw

She believed in magic - the magic of places, the magic of people, the magic of coincidences, serendipity, and fortune. She enjoyed wandering through the world with the open mind and curiosity of a four-year-old child. In her world the mystical, mythical, and magical inhabited the same space and time as the ordinary and the practical. At Bethesda Terrace, she always felt close to a source of magic and creativity. It was as if she was tapping into the place where dragons, angels, gods, sorceresses, and demons came to life. ~ Jamie Le Fay

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.
The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.
Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.
Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.
Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.
Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

(Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre) ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

As you see, I bear some resentment and some scars from the years of anti-genre bigotry. My own fiction, which moves freely around among realism, magical realism, science fiction, fantasy of various kinds, historical fiction, young adult fiction, parable, and other subgenres, to the point where much of it is ungenrifiable, all got shoved into the Sci Fi wastebasket or labeled as kiddilit
subliterature. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I need to tell you a story.'

What about?

Zachariah, Zachariah, my foundling boy. 'A boy. A boxer, a fighting man. A brother. No. About brothers, sisters. Foundlings, laid-in-the-streets. Fights, fighting. A boy, it all begins with the boy. My love. A wolf. Peter and the Wolf! Oh dear! I am very crazy! Let me - I must tell you this story.'

Why?

'I'm frightened.'

Of?

'Fractals. Patterns.'

Ah, says the fish, looking at Rachel with his wise eyes. Chaos!

'Yes,' thinks Rachel. 'Chaos. Fearful symmetry.'

Go home, says the fish, flipping over, flashing in light, and diving down into the great blue sea. ~ Emma Richler

The science of magic & the magic of science ~ P.M. Perry

I wish I could run into the world's arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself. ~ F.K. Preston

But the days are still ours, and we still have many fine moments ahead of us. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Magical realism as a declaration in the text is usually when someone can't speak and then they must be magically reinvigorated in some way. ~ Fred D'Aguiar

She sent me a sunny smile, and what a smile, George; it was a smile that could have melted the whole world, because if the whole world had seen it, it would have had the power to stop all wars and hatred on the face of the planet, or at lease there would have been some long ceasefires. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Most girls celebrate their birthdays with friends. I spent mine with a pack of wolves. ~ Ruth Emmie Lang

I just wanted one more day." More tears welled up in her eyes. "But it would never be enough. I could keep asking for one more day for the rest of my life. ~ Cindi Madsen

Her beauty was ethereal, knocking on the door of the part of his psyche that still believed in magic and miracles. ~ D.A. Henneman

If all goes well, we will be back in time for a proper memorial service [for your father], Ben. I promise."

Ben looked up, and all the bitterness was gone from his eyes, replaced somehow by both resignation and determination.

"And if all doesn't go well?" he asked, tightening his grip on Coralee's trusting hand as he led her outside to the driveway.

Kira's flawless features morphed into something like a smile, yet wholly without happiness or humor.

"Then you'll all be meeting up with [your father] soon enough, I expect. Either that, or you shall wish it was so. ~ Caitlin Rush

Like everyone, I had,on many previous occasions, ignored a half-open door leading elsewhere - in the chilly passages of strange houses, in backyards, on the outskirts of towns. The frontier of our world is not far away; it doesn't run along the horizon or in the depths. It glimmers faintly close by, in the twilight of our nearest surroundings; out of the corner of our eye we can always glimpse another world, without realizing it. We are walking all the time along a shore and along the edge of a virgin forest. Our gestures would seem to rise out of an entity that also encompasses these concealed spaces, and in an odd way they reveal their shadowy existence, although we are unaware of the roar of waves and shrieks of animals - the disquieting accompaniment to our words (and possibly their secret birthplace); we are unaware of the glittering jewels in the unknown world of nooks and crannies; usually we don't stray off the path even once in our lifetime. ~ Michel Ajvaz

Music can transport you to another time with a couple of notes. It makes you feel the heartbreak or the love, right along with the singer. The right song speaks to your soul in a way nothing else can. It's magic. ~ Cindi Madsen

The Waverley sisters had married men as steadfast and normal as the women were mercurial and strange. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

The raft was seized, with a noise like needles knitting, and we were hemmed in for winter -- river and the old channel's oxbow lake having frozen solid. By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers...it must have been the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action that had given a common horse wings and changed a woman into a laurel tree. ~ Norman Lock

Can we go to Alum Bay, please?" Snugs asked the moose, his little nose twitching with excitement, and his voice a little faster than usual because he couldn't wait ~ Suzy Davies

The closet is a closet, but it's also a rocket or a tree house. Your mind is a palace, as long as you go in the right rooms. ~ Erin Entrada Kelly

When you write it, don't write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don't try to give an explanation. Just say that I don't know what to make of it, just write it like I tell it, so the reader can make up his own mind. ~ David Mitchell

Few of us make any serious effort to remember what we read. When I read a book, what do I hope will stay with me a year later? If it's a work of nonfiction, the thesis, maybe, if the book has one. A few savory details, perhaps. If it's fiction, the broadest outline of the plot, something about the main characters (at least their names), and an overall critical judgment about the book. Even these are likely to fade. Looking up at my shelves, at the books that have drained so many of my waking hours, is always a dispiriting experience. One Hundred Years of Solitude: I remember magical realism and that I enjoyed it. But that's about it. I don't even recall when I read it. About Wuthering Heights I remember exactly two things: that I read it in a high school English class and that there was a character named Heathcliff. I couldn't say whether I liked the book or not. ~ Joshua Foer

fluttering amidst the stars / stands the thin black/ stalk / of a glimmerglass girl / ~ Holly Walrath

Sleep: the moon still hasn't moved the width of a constellation since you were a girl. Since you have become a woman, the stars that stand above the halls of Palladios have not yet disappeared behind the domes of San Marco. But only since then has the world become the world. ~ Alexander Lernet-Holenia

Magical realism allows an artist like myself to inject layers of meaning without being obvious. In American culture, where there is freedom of expression, this approach may seem forced, unnecessary and misunderstood. But this system of communication has become very Iranian. ~ Shirin Neshat

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

Everyone needs sisters. ~ Erin Entrada Kelly

Be selfish sometimes. Love yourself. If you always put others before you, you will find yourself feeling beaten down by the world and that will make you bitter. Don't let the world make you bitter, not when you have such a beautiful soul. ~ Spencer Hoshino

We prayed the moon would unstopper long enough to suck us through to the other side so we could see how dull the stars were at their backsides. ~ Lindsay Hunter

Dreams are memories we've lost to sleep. ~ F.K. Preston

I am undependable. You might get gritty contemporary with one book, science fiction, magical realism, or high fantasy with another. ~ Mary E. Pearson

I said, "Who are you really? Why are you giving people money?"
"Everybody wants money," she said, as if it were self-evident. "It makes them happy. It will make you happy, if you let it." We had come out by the heap of grass clippings, behind the circle of green grass that we called the fairy ring: sometimes, when the weather was wet, it filled with vivid yellow toadstools. ~ Neil Gaiman

I'd rather have a life of chaos beside you than a life of quietude and stability without you... ~ Catia M Rodrigues

To be free means always leaving ... or returning to a place where leaves never fall. ~ Rich Shapero

A Warrior-Sage, you see, is someone who believes in magic and makes magic work for him. He may not call it magic, but the terminology doesn't matter. He may call it positive thinking, or belief, or PMA, or power, or visualization, or self-confidence, or faith, or self-control, or zeal, or enthusiasm, or any of a thousand names, but it's magic all the same.

He may call it the God force, or universal consciousness, or Spirit, or his inner self, or peace, or gentle effort, or universal law, or Zen, or divine love, or even dish water! But as long as he makes it a part of his life and understands how to use it, then it's magic. ~ Karl Wiggins

This is the beginning of a new time," Torius said, "a great moment for us. One of us has learnt the Tongue and freed a princess. I have saved him and killed the guards. No longer will we be slaves. No longer will the guards tell us what to do. No longer will we listen. We will fight till we get what we want!"
A roar exploded from the children around him.
"This is a revolution," Torius went on. "You all remember the pain that you have felt when the guards have touched you. You all know the shame we carry within us at being treated like this. No more! We will stand! ~ Y.K. Willemse

At the end of the day, it's about the best interests of the children. ~ Marlee Matlin

At the end of the day, it's about the reader's attachment to and belief in the magical elements that make or break magical realism. ~ Tea Obreht

Magical Realist writer write the ordinary as miraculous and the miraculous as ordinary. ~ Bruce Holland Rogers

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? ~ F.K. Preston

To my mother, I was everything. To my father, nothing at all. To my grandmother, I was a daily reminder of loves long lost. ~ Leslye Walton

For anyone with a library in their head and love in their heart, ~ Kevin Ansbro

There is a chest inside my heart, where a magical world is hidden. With my novels, I hand to you the key to that world. ~ P.J. Mann

The good thing about writing a true story is that you don't have to worry about giving an impression of realism. ~ Laurent Binet

If anxiety is the major force of our contemporary condition, a lot of poetry - including my own, mostly - sort of tries to escape that, fly off into magical thinking or bewilderment or whatever. ~ Mike Young

Life never seems to prepare us sufficiently for epiphanies. ... they are not magical intrusions from another world, but reality, naked, and without shame. ~ Monks Of New Skete

The violence that undergirded the country, so flagrantly on display during Black History Month, and the intimate violence of "Yeah, nigger, what's up now?" were not unrelated. And this violence was not magical, but was of a piece and by design. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Life is never ordinary, it is always a wonder, it is always magical. ~ Debasish Mridha

I wish that the circuses that were around now felt like they did then. They're not quite as elegant or as magical as they used to be. There was something about the old tent shows, the Big Top, the canvas, the lights, the sawdust, the hay and the animals that's just missing now. Now, it's all urbanized and maybe a little garish. ~ Francis Lawrence

The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grit and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban boilto houses, shacks whose only romance was their names ~ Ernest Hemingway,

The realism frightens me more than the bubble gum-y, heightened stuff. ~ Chloe Sevigny

It is better to give love. Hatred is a low and degrading motion and is so poisonous that no man is strong enough to use it safely. The hatred we think we are directing against some person or thing or system has a devilish way of turning back upon us. When we seek revenge we administer slow poison to ourselves. When we administer affection it is astonishing what magical results we obtain. ~ Thomas Dreier

In real life it was like they were playing some children's game. It was a little kid's idea of a magical object. Though what did you expect from a bunch of talking ~ Lev Grossman

Our basic civil liberties are in jeopardy, but we're going to be spending our time as a society arguing about whether or not schoolchildren should be forced to pay tribute to imaginary invisible beings who live in magical kingdoms in outer space some ~ Tom Tomorrow

There's a poem by Borges that begins, Ya no es mágico el mundo. Te han dejado . The world's not magical anymore. You've been left. He says left , an everyday word, a word that makes no noise. ~ Yasmina Reza

The way black women say "girl" can be magical. Frankly, I have no solid beliefs about the survival of consciousness after physical death. But if it's going to happen I know what I want to see after my trek toward the light. I want to see a black woman who will smile and say, "Girl ... ~ Abigail Padgett

Or realism. Or realism. If history shows that the scale of human calamity increases. If the evidence of history corroborates what my students sense by intuition - ~ Graham Swift

They're power-hungry, the mundane said of the magical people. They're immoral, people said, and they're scary. Playing with the dark arts could plunge me into evil. I'd be pulled toward depravity. Blasphemy would begin to seem like truth, bad like good, God like Satan. It had happened to people through the centuries, they said. And they were right. All that did happen. ~ Christine Wicker

Doing a film with your friend is probably the best way to end that friendship but we worked together really well. We just have that thing. Chemistry is something that ... I just think it is the last thing in Hollywood, the last magical thing they haven't computerised. There's nothing you can do about it - it's either there or it's not and it doesn't matter if you're friends or not. It was just a bonus that we were. ~ Ryan Reynolds

What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel