Magical Realism Quotes

“Realism can break a writer's heart.”
― Salman Rushdie, Shame

“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, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

“It is easier to start a war than to end it.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself.
She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.”
― Oscar Wilde

“For anyone with a library in their head and love in their heart,”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Fish That Climbed a Tree

“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 lives. Stories that use the power of myth to speak truth to the human heart.
Charles de Lintcreates a magical world that’s not off in a distant Neverland but here and now and accessible, formed by the “magic” of friendship, art, community, and social activism. Although most of his books have not been published specifically for adolescents and young adults, nonetheless young readers find them and embrace them with particular passion. I’ve long lost count of the number of times I’ve heard people fromtroubled backgroundssay that books by Charles saved them in their youth, and kept them going.
Recently I saw that parole officer again, and I asked after his work. “Gets harder every year,” he said. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.” He stopped me as I turned to go. “That writer? That Charles de Lint? My wife got me to read them books…. Sometimes I pass them to the kids.”
“Do they like them?” I asked him curiously.
“If I can get them to read, they do. I tell them:Stories are important.”
And then he looked at me and smiled.”
― Terri Windling

“Everyone knows how to cook parasols—you soak them in milk, then dip them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them until they're brown as chops. You can do the same thing with a panther amanita that smells of nuts, but people don't pick amanitas. They divide mushrooms into poisonous and edible, and the guidebooks discuss the features that allow you to tell the difference—as if there are good mushrooms and bad mushrooms. No mushroom book separates them into beautiful and ugly, fragrant and stinking, nice to touch and nasty, or those that induce sin and those that absolve it. People see what they want to see, and in the end they get what they want—clear, but false divisions. Meanwhile, in the world of mushrooms, nothing is certain.”
― Olga Tokarczuk

“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, Goldfish Tears

“Carry on the Flame to a new dawn I am with you.
~the Goddess of the Stars and the Sea”
― Jodine Turner, The Keys to Remember

“Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of, herself.
She is not to be judged by any external standard of resemblance.”
― Wilde, Oscar

“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, The Land of Forgotten Girls

“The rich died, too, disappointing all those who thought that somehow they didn't. Peter Lakes had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary they were for the taking.”
― Mark Helprin, Winter's Tale

“പണ്ടു പണ്ടു് ഓന്തുകൾക്കും ദിനോസറുകൾക്കും മുൻപ് ഒരു സായാഹ്നത്തിൽ രണ്ടു ജീവബിന്ദുക്കൾ നടക്കാനിറങ്ങി. അസ്തമയത്തിലാറാടിനിന്ന ഒരു താഴ്വരയിലെത്തി.
ഇതിന്റെ അപ്പുറം കാണണ്ടേ? ചെറിയ ബിന്ദു വലിയതിനോട് ചോദിച്ചു. പച്ചപിടിച്ച താഴ്വര, ഏട്ടത്തി പറഞ്ഞു. ഞാനിവിടെ തന്നെ നിൽക്കട്ടെ. എനിക്കു പോകണം, അനുജത്തി പറഞ്ഞു.”
― O.V. Vijayan, ഖസാക്കിന്റെ ഇതിഹാസം | Khasakkinte Ithihasam | The Legends of Khasak

“Where do they go, these dreams of mine? Do they live? Do they die? Do they fall? Do they fly?”
― F.K. Preston, The Artist, The Audience, and a Man Called Nothing

“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, Cipher

“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, The Orange Girl

“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, Cipher

“SWAT? For me?" Still trembling, one hand clung to the ambulance gurney, the other held a massive sterilised cotton wool wad under my nose.
"Tactical Support was busy. You got Dennis and Arlo," said Harry, speed-reading the papers he'd snatched from inside my jacket.
Closest his hands had been to my chest in a long time.
"Which one broke my nose?"
"That'd be Dennis.”
― Morana Blue, Gatsby's Smile

“The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It’s the tender understanding that we’re living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there’s quite a bit of wonder in that.”
― F.K. Preston, The Artist, The Audience, and a Man Called Nothing

“It's life's failure and its deficiencies that make someone a daydreamer. I don't understand why prophets and philosophers didn't see the significance in that. I think imagination is at the heart of reality, or at least, is the immediate definition and interpretation of reality.”
― Shokoofeh Azar, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

“Relationships are used by the darkness to keep people revolving around the ego’s demands. For a moment, people see the light of the divine in each other. They run to it and then quickly forget the light they once saw as their fears reclaim their consciousness. Thus begins the ongoing battle to protect one’s own ‘rights’, in case they be forgotten or betrayed. The tally of what is owed is counted, the guilt of perceived wrong doings is cast upon the other, one’s freedom must be paid as the price for ‘love’, and it is only in short periods of peace when all of this is forgotten. Those moments are the precious windows of the Soul.”
― Donna Goddard, Waldmeer

“Magic is what happens when the blueprint of who you are comes into the alignment with the expanding energy of the universe.”
― Sasha Graham, The Magic of Tarot: Your Guide to Intuitive Readings, Rituals, and Spells

“DESIRE: Trust me, if you reject love long enough you’ll forget how to accept it.”
― Alyssa Ahle, Lost and Found: a stage play

“If I stay here, I will be just fine. Before I shut the door, I got a box of crackers from the kitchen, so I will be fine.”
― Kathleen Alcala, The Flower in the Skull

“In the place Calliope had bled, a trail of corn sprouted behind her. She picked the two tallest corn shoots then sat beside two large, smooth stone metates for grinding. From within her husk rebozo, she pulled a mano, shucked the corn, laid it on the altar, and with the mano in both hands, she began moving with the weight of her whole body, the strength of her shoulders and back pressing down through her arms, back and forth, shearing, until the corn became a fine yellow powder.
The Ancients sang her on as she worked. When the Earth has had enough, she will shake her troubles off. She will shake her troublemakers off. She scooped this and mashed it into the butter of her hands. Rolled it into a ball, flattened it again. Shaped and shaped until the corn grew into a child, who sprang from the stone of her hands, laughing.
For she was finished, and sank into the earth, solid, hardened, at peace. And as her corn-made child ran from the mound to the grass below, the spirits intoned. The Earth has all the power she needs.
When she decides to use her power, you will know.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“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, Cipher

“A shock of light. Unbelievable light. Blood orange swallowing the Albuquerque evening. A pulling in, taking back, reclaiming something stolen. Halfway home from her Saturday-morning lecture, Calliope Santiago drove across the river toward West Mesa and the Sleeping Sisters, ancient cinder-cone volcanoes in the distance marking the stretch of desert where she lived. Only now she could see no farther than two feet ahead of her from the blinding light, the splotches in her eyes bursting like bulbs in an antique camera. She blinked, not sure what she was seeing. She meant to cover her eyes. Meant to shield her sight.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“The rocks pummeled her belly. Something rose in her throat and when she tried to speak, from her mouth she dislodged a rock. She was made of rocks. She couldn’t move from the fossilized casing she’d once called her body.
Heat crackled nearby. A conversation wove through the fire. A child’s sweaty body curled at her lap, chest rhythms of breathing, up and down, pressing against her.
'I didn’t want to believe it was happening again.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Trinity Sight

“UNREQUITED LOVE: Look, you see me, a lonely girl having a drink. What do you do?
LOST: Avoid eye contact at all costs?
UNREQUITED LOVE: Oh come on, don’t you ever randomly flirt and find yourself falling in love with attractive young women?
LOST: I’ve forgotten how.
UNREQUITED LOVE: How peculiar.
LOST: (Struggles, trying to find the right words.) No…I mean I did once, but I’ve forgotten most things about love I guess. It just comes with the territory of losing your heart.
UNREQUITED LOVE: Wait. (Beat.) You lost your heart?
LOST: Yeah um...I lost my heart about a year ago. Filed a police report and everything, but they haven’t had any luck finding it.
UNREQUITED LOVE: But without a heart, how can you-
LOST: Love? I can’t.
UNREQUITED LOVE: Can you remember what love feels like?
LOST: (Shrugs.) Vaguely, but for the most part I don’t remember much about it. Like when couples hold hands, I don’t understand why they do that.
UNREQUITED LOVE: Must make for some lonely nights.”
― Alyssa Ahle, Lost and Found: a stage play

“UNREQUITED LOVE: Some days my body feels empty and I feel like an idiot. To care for someone with every inch of your soul, and then find out they couldn’t care less about you... It’s like being slowly stabbed in the chest by someone who enjoys murdering the innocent.
LOST: But you always seem so happy.
UNREQUITED LOVE: There’s only so much you can’t feel.”
― Alyssa Ahle, Lost and Found: a stage play