c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Not only do we all have magic, it's all around us as well. We just don't pay attention to it. Every time we make something out of nothing, that's an act of magic. It doesn't matter if it's a painting or a garden, or an abuelo telling his grandchildren some tall tale. Every time we fix something that's broken, whether it's a car engine or a broken heart, that's an act of magic.And what makes it magic is that we *choose* to create or help, just as we can choose to harm. But it's so easy to destroy and so much harder to make things better. That's why doing the right thing makes you stronger.If we can only remember what we are and what we can do, nobody can bind us or control us.
— Charles de Lint, The Mystery of Grace
A man's magic demonstrates what sort of person he is, what is held most deeply inside of him. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power. I was not a murderer. I was not like Victor Sells. I was Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. I was a wizard. Wizards control their power. They don't let it control them. And wizards don't use magic to kill people. They use it to discover, to protect, to mend, to help. Not to destroy.
— Jim Butcher, Storm Front
Kim was more than a little inclined to snarl at him, but in the past few days she had learned that snarling at Mairelon did little good. He simply smiled and corrected her grammar.
— Patricia C. Wrede, A Matter of Magic
For a moment, I almost felt sorry for her. Then the bitch blasted me with her water magic, and I got over it.
— Jennifer Estep, Widow’s Web
Healthy curiosity is a great key in innovation.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
Touch magic. Pass it on.
— Jane Yolen, Touch Magic: Fantasy, Faerie & Folklore in the Literature of Childhood
It rained toads the day the White Council came to town.
— Jim Butcher, Summer Knight
I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.
— Mary Balogh, Simply Magic
Sandry: "There has to be something we can do." Lark: "We're mages. We do what we can, but some problems are too big to fix." Sandry: "Then I wish I weren't a mage. What good is magic, if you can't use it to help people.
— Tamora Pierce, Daja's Book
Magic is the only honest profession. A magician promises to deceive you and he does.
— Karl Germain
This rough magicI here abjure, and, when I have requiredSome heavenly music, which even now I do,To work mine end upon their senses thatThis airy charm is for, I'll break my staff,Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,And deeper than did ever plummet soundI'll drown my book.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
The law of sympathy is one of the most basic parts of magic. It states that the more similar two objects are, the greater the sympathetic link. The greater the link, the more easily they influence each other.
— Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
Oh this? It's a 'bookworm.'They live in books, and they love to eat important or valuable words.
— CLAMP, xxxHolic, Vol. 7
The magic of the street is the mingling of the errand and the epiphany.
— Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Magic, madam, is like wine and, if you are not used to it, it will make you drunk.
— Susanna Clarke, The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories
Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.
— Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
One cannot shape the world without being reshaped in the process. Each gain of power requires its own sacrifice.
— Phil Hine, Condensed Chaos: An Introduction to Chaos Magic
Matthew kept hinting that his desire - for blood, chiefly- was so strong that it put everything else at risk. But vampires weren’t the only creatures who had to manage such strong impulses. Much of what qualified as magic was simply desire in action. Witchcraft was different- that took spells and rituals. But magic? A wish, a need, a hunger too strong to be denied- these could turn into deeds when they cross a witch’s mind.
— Deborah Harkness, A Discovery of Witches
Mere words cannot defeat a true hero. Unless they happen to be the words to some sort of Instant Death Spell. Magic is scary.
— Christopher Healy, The Hero's Guide to Storming the Castle
I will love you forever,” I murmured, and he stroked the hair off of my forehead.I will hold you to that.” His face was grim and his voice was sober—hetouched my handprint of chaos as he said it, and I knew in my bones that it was a solemn vow, and not a sweet or a kind offering of love at all. Green would make me live if he had to crack the foundations of the world.
— Amy Lane, Rampant
I believe that there is luminosity hiding in the shadow of the mundane. And things that hover at the periphery of our vision. If that’s magic, then I believe in it.
— Natasha Mostert
Gina always believed there was magic in the world. "But it doesn't work in the way it does in fairy tales," she told me. "It doesn't save us. We have to save ourselves.
— Charles de Lint, The Very Best of Charles de Lint
I am, as far as I can tell, about a month behind Lord Byron. In every town we stop at we discover innkeepers, postillions, officials, burghers, potboys, and all kinds and sorts of ladies whose brains still seem somewhat deranged from their brief exposure to his lordship. And though my companions are careful to tell people that I am that dreadful being, an English magician, I am clearly nothing in comparison to an English poet and everywhere I go I enjoy the reputation- quite new to me, I assure you- of the quiet, good Englishman, who makes no noise and is no trouble to any one...
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Art Magicke has rules. It means I have to teach you all my tricks. All the substitutions, the replications, the illusions. How to read minds and palms and leaves. How to disappear and reappear."How to saw people in half?""That too.""Nice.
— Catherine Fisher, Sapphique
No man, no power, can bind the action of wizardry or still the words of power. For they are the very words of Making, and one who could silence them could unmake the world.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore
If you feel afraid of magic, then you've been enchanted.
— Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
— Barry Gehm
As in most fairy tales, there's a prince and a princess, dragons and some magic, and the feeling it gives you that anything is possible if we could stay this way forever.
— Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading
She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina. She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.
— Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queen
This is why magic is worse even than quantum physics. Because, while both spit in the eye of common sense, I've never yet had a Higgs bosun turn up and try to have a conversation with me.
— Ben Aaronovitch, Whispers Under Ground
Seven, Richie thought. That's the magic number. There has to be seven of us. That's the way it's supposed to be.
— Stephen King, It
Everything in the world is actually connected. That means, even if we get separated, we'll never be alone
— Shinobu Ohtaka
In fact, people who posses not magic at all can instill their home-cooked meals with love and security and health, transforming ingredients and bringing disparate people together as family and friends. There's a reason that when opening one's home to guests, the first thing you do is offer food and drink. Cooking is a kind of everyday magic.
— Juliet Blackwell
I furrowed my brows at him. What was so amazing about a stick? I could pick one up outside on the way to the car. “Let me guess, you’re Harry Potter and this is the school of Hogwarts. If I say Lumos will it light up?
— Brandi Salazar, Faerie Tales: The Misfortune of a Teenage Socialite
I was caged within a four dimensional cube that eclipsed the world around me in an icy mist. I screamed; begging someone, anyone to hear my pleas, but my voice had been extinguished and left me with a slight wheeze from what little oxygen I had. I could glimpse the field of energy as it shrank through the safety of my circle to envelop me in a blazing grip. I was alone; unbearably separated from my haven.
— J.D. Stroube, Caged in Darkness
If you still believe in magic, you're subject to enchantment.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
Personally, I'm a lazy kind of guy, and leaving the door open on the mystical saves me work. I don't have to stress my brain trying to explain the unexplainable. It's magic. End of discussion.
— Janet Evanovich, Wicked Appetite
The sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who might have worked, having been canonically established as being ineffective on wood, but nobody had ever figured out how to use the controls on the blasted thing.
— Jim C. Hines, Codex Born
She would walk through the kitchen at any hour, whenever she was hungry, and put her fork in the pots and eat a little of everything without placing anything on a plate, standing in front of the stove, talking to the serving women, who were the only ones with whom she felt comfortable, the ones she got along with best.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
Love and magic are like oil and water--they just don't mix.
— Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer
Class is entirely intangible, and the way it affects things isn't subject to scientific analysis, and it's not supposed to be real but it's pervasive and powerful. See; just like magic.
— Jo Walton, Among Others
The Prime Minister gazed hopelessly at the pair of them for a moment, then the words he had fought to suppress all evening burst from him at
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The woods were deserted that day.The stones stood still and silent, as though they were waiting for something. At the center of them all, a jagged piece of amber glowed in the growing darkness. Lights fizzed softly around it, turning pink, orange, purple, blue.No one saw it. No one ever did. Why would they? No one knoew about its magic, not anymore. They had forgotten all about such magic a long, long time ago. About the same time they stopped believing in faries.How foolish.
— Liz Kessler, Philippa Fisher and the Fairy's Promise
Nobody gets in to see the wizard. Not nobody.
— L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Not all magic is fireworks and fanfare. Sometimes magic is quiet and sneaks up on you. An illusion is what needs all the bells and whistles to make itself appear grander than it really is, which is just a trick that can be explained.
— Jeff Guinn, The Autobiography of Santa Claus
The alchemist was dazed and dumbfounded, as the true meaning of the magic was revealed: *The dead will rise from glade to glen and ancient will be young again*. The dead had, after all, risen. From dead and dry things there was growth, and new life everywhere. And the endlessly long winter had at last turned to spring. From life to death and back again to life. It was indeed the greatest magic in the world.
— Lauren Oliver
The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.
— Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense
You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that's how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then lave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.
— Brad Barkley, Dream Factory
But the other Ministers considered that to employ a magician was one thing, novelists were quite another and they would not stoop to it.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Sweet serenity
—  the love and magic of two souls forever intertwined
I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I cannot sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.
— Benedict Jacka, Cursed
Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants.
— Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures
I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sence enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us - like electricity and horses and steam.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
The risks involved in the pursuit of magic are--put simply--either getting frightened by unpleasant perceptions or becoming deluded. Unfortunately it is possible to suffer from both symptoms at the same time.
— Philip Carr-Gomm, The Book of English Magic
Without asking, he moved behind her and brushed her hair over her shoulder. Drawing the necklace around her neck, he fastened the clasp. The amber felt cool against her sweltering skin. Lifting it, she rotated the pendant, watching as it caught the light. "It's lovely." Before she could change her mind, she dug into her pocket and shoved the rest of the coins into his hand.
— Amber Argyle, Witch Song
Potential, and the will to deploy it. That's all magic is in the end, you know.
— Richard K. Morgan, The Steel Remains
A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.
— Laura Gilpin
Unseen University was much bigger on the inside. Thousands of years as the leading establishment of practical magic in a world where dimensions were largely a matter of chance in any case had left it bulging in places where it shouldn't have places. There were rooms containing rooms which, if you entered them, turned out to contain the room you'd started with, which can be a problem if you are in a conga line.
— Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
this was a moment of magic revealing to us all, for a few moments, a hidden world of grace and wonder beyond the one of which our eyes told us, a world that no words could delineate, as insubstanttial as a cloud, as iridescent as a dragon-fly and as innocent as the heart of a rose.
— Elspeth Huxley, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood
Kindness is a magical spell—performed by enlightened beings—meant to enchant hearts and lift weary souls that they might fly.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
That's our cue to depart." "They know something " I pointed out. "I know something too. I know we're going to attract a lot of unwanted attention if they keep screaming. And then we have to make up some ridiculous explanation about how we heard screaming through the vents in our rooms and we followed the sound back to the basement and we found these girls lying on the ground and pretending to be tied up by invisible rope because they're practicing for the regional mime championships." I blinked at her. "Is that explanation more or less believable than we woke up because two girls who are actually evil magicians tripped a magical alarm wired to a door in the basement we aren't supposed to know about " Scout paused for a minute then nodded. "Point made.
— Chloe Neill, Hexbound
Is that Disney magic of pixie magic?" I kid... "It is life magic".
— Carrie Jones, Entice
Wait until you meet my family. At Thanksgiving, we kill everything we can find, put it into a pot, and call it 'holiday gumbo'.
— Molly Harper, A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses
If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.
— Hermann Hesse
You said th' Magic was in my back. Th' doctor calls it rheumatics.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
But there would be no confrontation the next day. And for Tommy Williams, there would be no school, either. Because the moment he walked through the gap in the stones to leave the circle, something quiet unexpected happened.Tommy, holding tightly on to his rock, took the step that divided the inside of the circle from the outside - and disappeared.The woods suddenly felt colder than usual. The darkness hung more heavily.The amber was gone - and now nothing would ever be the same.
— Liz Kessler, Philippa Fisher and the Fairy's Promise
B looked down the shaft, at a metal ladder and darkness beyond. "Me first?"Of course. You're the apprentice, so you always go first into the unknown. If anyone's going to be eaten by a grue, it should be you."Tough job. But at least the hours are terrible.
— Tim Pratt, Spell Games
His hair was shorter than I remembered, tawny in this half-light, the tousled edges casually framing the clean, commanding lines of his face. His mouth, normally so stern was relaxed now and as I stared a slight sweet smile touched his lips, its curve softening the straight strong lines of his nose and brow. Finally, inevitably, I met his eyes and felt a connection that seared straight through me, down through my soles and away. Those eyes, darker than mine, the darkest blue, dark and as impenetrable as glaciers. Tonight he was real, so very real that my heart thumped, my blood sang, my legs shook.
— Hannah Blatchford, Friend or Fae
They were all dressed in their finest as though life really were some magical stage play in which every moment ought to be illuminated with its own bright spotlight.
— Anna Godbersen, Envy
When you make a film, if you are an insider, you're usually the last person to know that your film is not right. But when you are an outsider, you have a little more objectivity.I think a part of my success is that I am naturally objective. I am not an insider.In many ways, Anupama is the same.Foreword, First Day First Show
— Shah Rukh Khan
Because theres one thing stronger than magic: sisterhood.
— Robin Benway, The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May, & June
Magic lies in between things, between the day and the night, between yellow and blue, between any two things.
— Charles de Lint, The Onion Girl
One day a wolf bit a man and the man caught it. Magic or science, it's all the same. The only thing magical about it is that we can't explain it." ~Sam
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
Although she was a logical, practical person, she believed that in books there existed a kind of magic. Between the aging covers on these shelves, contained in tiny, abstract black marks on sheets of paper, were voices from the past. Voices that reached into the future, into Claire's own heart and mind, to tell her what they knew, what they'd learned, what they'd seen, what they'd felt. Wasn't that magic?
— Christi Phillips, The Devlin Diary
Regular people have such a hard time listening to the low hum of instinct.
— Suzanne Palmieri, The Witch of Little Italy
You should never turn down the offer of another man’s story,’ the fox persisted, moving off a little further into the trees ahead. ‘Stories are the only thing that separates us from the animals after all.
— T.B. McKenzie
Red was ruby, green was fluorescent, yellow was simply incandescent. Color was life. Color was everything.Color, you see, was the universal sign of magic.
— Tahereh Mafi, Furthermore
The nails from a suicide's coffin, and the skull of the parricide, were of course no trouble; for Vesquit never traveled without these household requisites.
— Aleister Crowley, Moonchild
A body is a body." Viscarro shrugged his bony shoulders. "Dead, alive, alive, dead. I fail to see the importance of the distinction."Yeah? So you'd just as soon fuck a living person as a dead one? What's the point of the distinction? Oh, right-one's normal, and one's called necrophilia."Viscarro sighed. "Touche, I suppose.
— Tim Pratt
Be confident to make your magic.
— Jay Woodman
Affection is when we can't find any flaws in the other. Maybe I could if I really wanted to, but I don't want to, I accept you as you are.
— Erika M. Szabo, Acceptance
Out last chance is a cat's magic sight. We are doomed.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, Nightseer
Years ago, homosexuals were given special status within the tribe. They had powerful medicine. I think it's even more true today, even though our tribe has assimilated into homophobia. I mean, a person has to have magic to assert their identity without regard to all the bullshit, right?
— Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven
Hubert's wife, Mindy, was a tiny powerhouse of a woman with a halo of wild blond hair and eye makeup so complex it took me a while to locate her pupils. She was clearly the brains of the operation, such as she was.
— Molly Harper, A Witch's Handbook of Kisses and Curses
A well told story can be magic. Let me show you...
— JoLynne Valerie
I live in a world without magic or miracles. A place where there are no clairvoyants or shapeshifters, no angels or superhuman boys to save you. A place where people die and music disintegrates and things suck. I am pressed so hard against the earth by the weight of reality that some days I wonder how I am still able to lift my feet to walk.
— Katja Millay, The Sea of Tranquility
When the mind, body, and spirit work together I believe anything is possible.
— Criss Angel
Perhaps I am too tame, too domestic a magician. But how does one work up a little madness? I meet with mad people every day in the street, but I never thought before to wonder how they got mad. Perhaps I should go wandering on lonely moors and barren shores. That is always a popular place for lunatics - in novels and plays at any rate. Perhaps wild England will make me mad.
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.-Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter, page 299
— J.K. Rowling
The denizens of Feyland find the absence of magic to be quite funny. I mean no offense. ”“None taken.”“For example – In the Land Over the Crystal River (for that's how we refer to humans), there was once a man and a woman. And the man was in love with the woman, and wanted her for himself. But because he had no magic, he couldn't feel whether or not there was a “pull” towards her or not, so he didn't know whether she loved him or not. So what did he do?”“What?”“He had to ASK her!” Kian couldn't help laughing.“I don't get it!”“Ask her!” said Kian. “It's funny – because he didn't have magic.” His laughter grew louder and less controlled, tinkling like bells in the winter snow. “He had to ask her!”I realized that there were some cultural barriers Kian and I might never transcend.
— Kailin Gow, Bitter Frost
In his voice resonated the timbre of a man who thinks he has convinced himself of an idea, but masks his own doubt by laboring to persuade others.
— Katherine Howe
…Magic is often a tricky thing. Often it is explainable. People fly through the air in planes and live underwater in submarines. Plants grow within weeks and cities operate and sustain millions of people. A person can talk to practically anyone almost anywhere around the world instantly. People’s images are transported by photo in the time it takes to press a button. Dinosaurs seem real, huge apes exist, and other worlds are a movie ticket away.
— Obert Skye
I only wish you could spend just five minutes beneath my skin and feel what it’s like. Feel the savage swarming magic I feel.
— Claire-Louise Bennett, Pond
One man’s “magic” is another man’s engineering. “Supernatural” is a null word.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Glitter and streamers of light swirled aroundus, and a chorus of tiny voices sang out a single note. Iwinced, knowing there was only one person who thought anormal entrance, like walking through a door, wasn’t goodenough for her; she had to announce her presence withsparkle and glitter and St. Peter’s choir.
— Julie Kagawa, Summer's Crossing
Fairy's side note: Even people who don't believe in magic really do.
— Janette Rallison, My Fair Godmother
So, what can I do?” I asked.“Annoy?”I gave him a hurt look.Justus pulled the tip of his hoodie over his eye and lowered his voice. “It remains to be seen; sometimes it takes years to uncover abilities.”“Maybe I can’t do anything.”His blue eyes flashed up to mine. “Learner, we are all gifted.
— Dannika Dark, Sterling
But magic must hurry on, and the lovers remain...
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
The World will always need "magic". Without it, Life is nothing but cheap tricks.
— Solange nicole
What you see is what you get.
— Criss Angel
Yes, Marya thought, the smell of woodsmoke and old snow pushing back her long black hair. Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
You want me to go back into that house protected by a magic sticky note?”“Don’t even start,” I told him. “It’s working. If it weren’t working, you couldn’t drag me into that place.”“What did you write on here? ‘Don’t die’?”“No, I wrote, ‘Don’t be an a-hole!’” I headed for the house.“On yours or mine?”“On yours.”“Well, in that case, your magic isn’t working. I’m still an asshole.
— Ilona Andrews
It's entirely conceivable that life's splendor surrounds us all, and always in its complete fullness, accessible but veiled, beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies—not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn't create but calls.
— Gustav Kafka
Beware Stephen! There will probably be a magical combat of some sort. I daresay I shall have to take on different forms – cockatrice, raw head and bloody bones, rains of fire, etc., etc. You may wish to stand back a little!
— Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Wizard’s work was a pleasure and a madness. No wonder the university magicians rambled at times like daft bastards.
— Lita Burke, Forever Boy
It's true
—  life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend.
Forget about weird Boy and move on
— Laura J. Burns
Even without being believed, magic can change things. It moves invisibly through the air, dissolving the usual ways of seeing, allowing new ways to creep in, secretly, quietly, like a stray cat sliding thought the bushes.
— Janet Taylor Lisle, Afternoon of the Elves
O, she's warm!If this be magic, let it be an artLawful as eating.
— William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale
Magic is that paganistic reversal of the process of religion, in which man, instead of letting himself be used by God for the divine purpose, drags down his god to the level of a tool, which he uses for his own selfish purpose.
— Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments
Every spell is a journey.
— Lawren Leo, Love's Shadow: Nine Crooked Paths
The core practice of magic is: The execution of a willed intent to create change in the material world, which either defies, hastens or purifies the consequences of natural cause and effect.
— Zeena Schreck
The implication of this particular tale is: Trust strangers. Believe in magic.
— Michael Cunningham, A Wild Swan: And Other Tales
It took place in the midnight in the University's Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.
— Terry Pratchett
Repetition opens doors, you know?
— Tim Lucas, The Book of Renfield: A Gospel of Dracula
White magic or black, it doesn’t make a difference. Natural and artificial? Obsolete distinctions
— David Porush
After dinner, at five o’clock, the crew distributed folding canvas cots to the passengers, and each person opened his bed wherever he could find room, arranged it with the bedclothes from his petate, and set the mosquito netting over that. Those with hammocks hung them in the salon, and those who had nothing slept on the tablecloths that were not changed more than twice during the trip.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
It’s like you are oozing magic.” Tari rolled her eyes. “Yes I am an all-powerful witch,” she said sarcastically. “No. Not a witch, but something. I can’t explain it. It’s as if magic is your friend,” Ivy continued.
— S.K. Whiteside, Scribe
When you're writing, you're creating something out of nothing ... A successful piece of writing is like doing a successful piece of m
— Susanna Clarke
We didn’t see anyone that day. We had no expectations. Everything was spontaneous. There wasn’t a single moment of stress. We laughed like crazy all afternoon – though I couldn’t tell you what about. And there was definitely something in the air – call it magic if you like – because that was the happiest Christmas any of us could remember, which makes me think that perhaps, like luck, magic is something we can make for ourselves. It isn’t something you can buy. It doesn’t come as standard. And you don’t need to plan, or to overspend, or to wrack your brains trying to come up with some extraordinary way to celebrate. Because sometimes it’s the little things that bring us the greatest pleasure.
— Joanne Harris
I don’t sell spells, and I don’t sell tricks. I don’t carry illusions or marked cards or weighted coins. I can not sell you an endless purse or help you win the lottery. I can’t make that girl you’ve got your eye on fall in love with you, and I wouldn’t do it even if I could. I don’t have a psychic hotline to your dead relatives, I don’t know if you’re going to be successful in your career, and I don’t know when you’re going to get married. I can’t get you into Hogwarts or any other kind of magic school, and if you even mention those stupid sparkly vampires I will do something unpleasant to you.
— Benedict Jacka, Cursed
But witchy magic doesn’t listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn’t really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.
— Franny Billingsley, Chime
When you stop chasing your dreams, your dreams start chasing you.
— Dez Del Rio, The Lipstick Killerz
And you that sought for magic in your youth but desire it not in your age, know that there is a blindness of spirit which comes from age, more black than the blindness of eye, making a darkness about you across which nothing may be seen, or felt, or known, or in any way apprehended.
— Lord Dunsany, The King of Elfland's Daughter
If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it andpush it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before,push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm ofmagic.
— Tom Robbins
There is magic in all life.
— Nadia Scrieva, Drowning Mermaids
There is a moment between waking and sleeping and between sleeping and waking when the mind seems to be in many places at once, when memories mingle with dreams, when what has been and what is yet to be exist side by side, and when the mind slips free of time and personality to wander in strange halls where the familiar and the strange become indistinguishable and ghosts and visions walk hand in hand. Aelis tumbled toward sleep and fell into this place, to the mind's borderlands, where magic is.
— M.D. Lachlan, Fenrir
We are trapped here up on this wall by an evil beyond comprehension. It is here that we are damned to remain for all eternity, under the grime of centuries, beyond time. When even the paint falls off and these prison-canvases are bare again… well, then we are in limbo,” the poor man opened his eyes wide giving them a ghostly look.
— Nathalie M. Leblanc
What is?', he said. 'What if?' is a question that belongs to magic.
— Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant
But that is impossible," said Peter."Magic is always impossible," said the magician. "It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.
— Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant
They were different colors: the right one blue, the left green. And her face in the light of the candle on the table startled me at first, just as it had in the icy night air. After seeing it on the street, I was afraid I had only imagined it: a still, luminous face with a silvery sheen. Finely hewn, with a long, straight nose and a wide mouth, it was nearly identical to another face, which I had photographed years before. Not on a person, bu on the fragment of a frieze I found in some ruins near Verona, The frieze, which depicted a band of musicians, had once been shadowed beneath a cornice high on the temple of Mercury, god of magic. Belonging to one of the musicians, it was a riveting face - like a puzzle that could not be solved - which I had never found, or expected to find, on a living woman.
— Nicholas Christopher, Veronica
The same bourgeois magic everywhere the mail train sets you down.
— Arthur Rimbaud
Magic was not in glitter and sparks. Real magic didn't need to be.
— Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows
Is thyselves even a word?
— Emma Harrison, Phoebe Who?
Sitting at the old patio table she’d cleared of leaves, she smiled and leaned back. The stars looked twisted in the limbs of the trees, like Christmas lights. She felt like part of the hollow around her was filling. She’d come here with too many expectations.
— Sarah Addison Allen
A radiant glow enveloped Alaura. Soft eruptions of various shades of effervescent green danced in the air and frolicked in the locks of her dark blonde hair. Whispers of yellows and blues revealed themselves near the skin, kissing the air with each leap.
— Diane Lynn McGyver
Black Magick is the process of self-transformation through an antinomian initiatory structure, Black meaning the hidden wisdom, power of darkness, dreams and staging the reality you wish and Magick being the process to ascend, become immortal in spirit.
— Michael W. Ford, Adamu - Luciferian Tantra and Sex Magick
Life's an act of magic, too. Claire Hamill sings a line in one of her songs that really sums it up for me: 'If there's no magic, there's no meaning.' Without magic- or call it wonder, mystery, natural wisdom- nothing has any depth. It's all just surface. You know: what you see is what you get. I honestly believe there's more to everything than that, whether it's a Monet hanging in a gallery or some old vagrant sleeping in an alley.
— Charles de Lint, The Onion Girl
What would this have been, if it had more power to give?""This may come as a surprise to you," he replied dryly, "But I am not an Ancient. Nor am I, human philosophy aside, a living construct.""Which means you don't know.""Which means, as you so succinctly put it, I do not know." - Kaylin & Tiamaris
— Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Silence
Thank God!" he said, and kissed her.Kissing Mairelon was much nicer than anything she had ever dared to imagine, despite the headache.
— Patricia C. Wrede, A Matter of Magic
Because now, the magic is everywhere.
— James Patterson, The Fire
What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?
— Jennifer McMahon, Don't Breathe a Word
Just having a certain kind of attitude can be magic.
— Matt Posner, The Ghost in the Crystal
There is an odd quirk in the human mind that makes a fearful man prefer to go quietly to a wicked-looking, gnarled "witch" for a countercharm than to a respectable licensed sorcerer or an accredited priest of the Church.
— Randall Garrett, Murder and Magic
Jaren found that, in doing balancing exercises, he could shut out not only the anxiety he felt but also the whisperings of the magic. The more he practiced, the better he could insulate himself from its insistent voice, and all other worries, and just focus on being...
— Derek Donais, MetalMagic: Talisman
Perhaps the magic would last, perhaps it wouldn't. But then again, what does?
— Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Wizards? Do you mean they do things a different way?""No, just the way we do,"Merlin replied.With a flick of his finger he lit the soggy heap of kindling that Arthur had gathered (...) A blaze leapt up on the instant. Merlin then opened his hands and produced some food out of thin air.
— Deepak Chopra, The Way of the Wizard: Twenty Spiritual Lessons for Creating the Life You Want
Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless.
— Larry Niven, N-Space
Ella, if it's magic, then nothing is supposed to happen.
— Brad Barkley, Dream Factory
The stranger was still smiling. He transformed himself into a rose bush and entwined me. My Christian education meant that ever since childhood I have had a horror of vice and it was not without a quite understandable terror that I discerned the pleasure I felt in the embrace of this vigorous bush whose branches gradually mingled with my limbs, my hair and my looks. When one of its flowers came apart in my mouth, I could feel myself grasping the sorcerer in my arms in my turn. He was transformed into a torrent, and I was a barge, into desert and I was smoke, into a car and I was a road, into a man and I was a woman. 'What we are doing is very wrong,' he said and was off.
— Robert Desnos
Mess with a magical chic and you get some major clean-up when she is pissed!!!
— Mandy M. Roth, Daughter of Darkness
Prognoses which have been made contend that our technology will terminate in pure necromancy. If so, everything we now experience would be only a departure and mechanics would become refined to a degree that would no longer require any crude embodiment. Lights, words, yes even thoughts would be sufficient. (1957)
— Ernst Jünger, The Glass Bees
As rain began to fall, Aldric worried the old machines would not be able to survive the weather. "Hand me that oil can!" he shouted to Siomon.Magic machines need oil?" asked Simon.Of course they need oil. They're not perfect.
— Jason Hightman, The Saint of Dragons
Hardly anyone understands the principles behind magic,"scoffed Betony. "It's too difficult.
— Elizabeth Kay, Back To The Divide
She’d bought a blue notebook in the pharmacy to write down her aunt’s remedies. Star tulip to understand dreams, bee balm for a restful sleep, black mustard seed to repel nightmares, remedies that used essential oils of almond or apricot or myrrh from thorn trees in the desert. Two eggs, which must never be eaten, set under a bed to clean a tainted atmosphere. Vinegar as a cleansing bath. Garlic, salt, and rosemary, the ancient spell to cast away evil.
— Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic
Blue must be worn for protection. Moonstones were useful in connecting with the living, topaz to contact the dead. Copper, sacred to Venus, will call a man to you, and black tourmaline will eliminate jealousy. When it came to love, you must always be careful. If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive on your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there. The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove. It had always cost $9.99 and was therefore called Love Potion Number Nine, which worked best on the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month.
— Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic
Elephant wanted no part of Rupert Panther. Rather, he wanted Rupert Panther to have no part of him, which was a realistic concern because Rupert was looking at Elephant like a gambler coming off a marathon poker game in Las Vegas looks at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet, like he has something to settle with a tall stack of pancakes, and he's all business and all fork.
— T.A. Young
I belong with the trees,the wind,the earth beneath my feet.I belong in the land of enchanting things.But mostly,I belong entwined in your kiss,lost,yet wild and free,pure bliss,like poetry.
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
And at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, "Yes, but now.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
The most glorious hour in Manhattan was when twilight fell in sheets across the Great Lawn. Bands of blue turned darker by the moment as the last of the pale light filtered through the boughs of cherry trees and black locusts. In October, the meadows turned gold; the vines were twists of yellow and red.
— Alice Hoffman, The Rules of Magic
Magic lies in the little things
— Tiki Kos
The only things that I expect are miracles.
— Greg Dutilly
The gold, lamp, Xerxes, is probably the most important thing in your life.
— Nishi Singh
Not at all," persisted Chalmers, unaware that Shea was trying to shush him. "The people of the country have agreed to call magic 'white' when practised for lawful ends by duly authorized agents of the governing authority, and 'black' when practised by unauthorized persons for criminal ends. That is not to say that the principles of the science — or art — are not the same in either event. You should confine such terms as 'black' and 'white' to the objects for which the magic is performed, and not apply it to the science itself, which like all branches of knowledge is morally neutral —""But," protested Belphebe, "is't not that the spell used to, let us say, kidnap a worthy citizen be different from that used to trap a malefactor?""Verbally but not structurally," Chalmers went on. After some minutes of wrangling, Chalmers held up the bone of his drumstick. "I think I can, for instance, conjure the parrot back on this bone — or at least fetch another parrot in place of the one we ate. Will you concede, young lady, that that is a harmless manifestation of the art?""Aye, for the now," said the girl. "Though I know you schoolmen; say 'I admit this; I concede that,' are ere long one finds oneself conceded into a noose.""Therefore it would be 'white' magic. But suppose I desired the parrot for some — uh — illegal purpose —""What manner of crime for ensample, good sir?" asked Belphebe."I — uh — can't think just now. Assume that I did. The spell would be the same in either case —""Ah, but would it?" cried Belphebe. "Let me see you conjure a brace of parrots, one fair, one foul; then truly I'll concede."Chalmers frowned. "Harold, what would be a legal purpose for which to conjure a parrot?"Shea shrugged. "If you really want an answer, no purpose would be as legal as any, unless there's something in gamelaws. Personally I think it's the silliest damned argument —
— L. Sprague de Camp, The Incompleat Enchanter
Magic and mystery writing follow the same, time-tested, three-act structure to stage their drama; set the scene, build the suspense, reveal the answer. In magic, these phases are known as the pledge, the turn and the prestige.
— Steve Burrows, A Shimmer of Hummingbirds: A Birder Murder Mystery
Common SenseAnd marvellous magicShare the same bough
— Neil Mach, The Bedevilment of Bertie Lunn
As a kid, she'd always loved Halloween. A magic night. A night when anything could happen. Monsters could be real. Magic could whisper in the air.
— Cynthia Eden, A Bit of Bite
i love watching what you become when life thinks it has you cornered.
— Curtis Tyrone Jones
In a world full of oddities, it’s how you outdo yourself within your own schizophrenia of abnormalities, that determines your most interesting self.
— Julieanne O'Connor
The Planet depends upon you, Rider of the Ancient Years!
— Nishi Singh
The gold lamp, Xerxes, is probably the most important thing in your life.
— Nishi  Singh, The Pearl of Immortality
Well sir, if things are real, they're there all the time"Are they?
— C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
You can only make magic if you act at the right time when the right conditions are in place
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, Book of Wisdom
Leave the comfort of your dark cocoon... Allow your imagination to take flight. Embrace those marvelous magical wings and soar!
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
Magic obeys only the heart of the one who uses it. Your magic would always be a kind magic, because you are kind, I can tell. Please stay and help us.
— Michael Morpurgo, Toto: The Dog-Gone Amazing Story of the Wizard of Oz
The sun was directly overhead, bright against the flower’s exterior. Warm blueish-purple silhouettes pirouetted and danced along interior walls.
— James Qualls, A Gathering of Dreams
Just out of sight around a bend in the river there's always a small island full of magic and mystery just waiting for you.
— Neil Leckman
I think magic is hard for most people to believe in, because our lives are typically without it. Sometimes the supernatural is disguised behind other things like bravery.
— Carla Reighard, Elle's Magical Shoes
If magic violates the fundamental laws of nature, they clearly weren't all that fundamental.
— Ruthanna Emrys, Winter Tide
I believe in magick because I am proof. A soul can be crushed into powder,yet dares to rise in love.Hope is a magick of it's own-And I it's most natural object of passion and power.
— Mishi McCoy
... but in the winter they were ensconced in a white powder of sparkling snow.
— Carla Reighard, Elle's Magical Shoes
In the winter, the snow had become glittery fairy dust that had given all the creatures of the meadow warm clothes and a fire to help them endure the winter.
— Carla Reighard, Elle's Magical Shoes
I'm only a kind of book doctor. I can give books new bindings, rejuvenate them a little, stop the bookworms from eating them, and prevent them from losing their pages over the years like a man loses his hair. But inventing the stories in them, filling new, empty pages with right words-- I can't do that. That's a very different trade. A famous writer once wrote, 'An author can be seen as three things: a storyteller, a teacher, or magician-- but a magician, the enchanter, is in the ascendant.
— Cornelia Funke, Inkheart
Never get out of bed, never go to the window, and never look behind the curtain.
— Roald Dahl, The BFG
Magic is just potential for creation. It follows no rules and breaks them all
— CARRIE RYAN & JOHN PARKE DAVIS
Sometimes I wonder what magic encircles all of us, what we could do if we were sensitive enough to unearth it.
— Kathryn Purdie, Burning Glass
Magic is only magic when don’t know ‘how’, when you know it, it can be experienced everyday!!!
— Harrish Sairaman