Quotes & Sayings About Books And Magic

Children's books: Every time you find the right, the necessary, book for a child - a book about sadness overcome, unfairness battled, hearts mended - you perform the best kind of magic ... every time you give just the right book to just the right child, you're saying, "You, my friend, have potential." That is a gift. That is a miracle. And that is what you do, each of you, every single day. — Katherine Applegate

I'll tell you something," said Francis,urgent with shoe lace, "if we keep on saying things weren't when we know perfectly well they were, we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we may ever have had. When do you find people in books going on like that? They just say 'This is magic!' and behave as if it was. They don't go pretending they're not sure. Why, no magic would stand it."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 2 — E. Nesbit

He selected one of these incantations and began to chant in a loud, wailing voice. All the clocks in the house suddenly went off at once, though it was only three-twenty; the copper pots hanging in the kitchen clanged and whanged against each other; and a couple of the wizard's books fell off their shelves with a clump. But nothing else happened. Prospero slammed the magic book shut and slumped into an overstuffed chair. He fumbled in his smoking stand for his pipe and tobacco. "I learned that spell fifty years ago," he mumbled as he lit his pipe. "And I still don't know what it's for. — John Bellairs

The important papers the Founders left us were the most significant writings in recorded history after the Holy Books, a magic trek for peace and guidance in times of trouble, a forgotten and often ignored dimension of the Nation founding. — George Sorbane

Upon moving to Cornwall in 1991, I became bewitched by its enchanting timeless beauty, which captured my heart and holds me still. Brooding and mysterious, the south-eastern edge of Bodmin Moor provided the wild backdrop against which the introduction to my magical training and love of nature began. — Carole Carlton

Consider a small child sitting on his mother's lap while she reads him a picture book. The picture book opens to a width that effectively places the child at the center of a closed circle - that of mother's body, arms, and the picture book ... That circle, so private and intimate, is a place apart form the demands and stresses of daily life, a sanctuary in and from which the child can explore the many worlds offered in picture books. Despite all of our society's technological advances, it still just takes one child, one book, and one reader, to create this unique space, to work this everyday magic. — Martha V. Parravano

I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, or how lonely the room which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland — Arthur Conan Doyle

Every time people give me presents, it just makes trouble."
He thought of his Naming Day party, and the gift from his Uncle Alfrin that had actually started all this. "Especially if it's books. Someone gave me a book as a present once."
"Then you'll know exactly what to do with these. Come on. Don't be shy. You'll hurt my feelings. — Mercedes Lackey

Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. — Diane Setterfield

Charlotte's dirty dishes haunted her dreams that night. She was running down a dark tunnel and close behind her plates, cups, bowls and crumbs made threatening noises. — Jennifer Lott

The Widdern - the non-magical world, where science rules and many people believe that magic only exists in books. They're wrong. — Caro King

We're all entitled to our different likes and dislikes. Imagine the world if we all liked the same things. — Malia Ann Haberman

What was magic, after all, but something that happened at the snap of a finger? Where was the magic in that? It was mumbled words and weird drawings in old books, and in the wrong hands it was as dangerous as hell, but not one half as dangerous as it could be in the right hands. The universe was full of the stuff; it made the stars stay up and the feet stay down.

But what was happening now . . . this was magical. Ordinary men had dreamed it up and put it together, building towers on rafts in swamps and across the frozen spines of mountains. They'd cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They'd waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn't dreamed, in the way people usually used the word, but they'd imagined a different world, and bent metal around it. And out of all the sweat and swearing and mathematics had come this . . . thing, dropping words across the world as softly as starlight. — Terry Pratchett

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. — John Keats

The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes — Anais Nin

Magic is a power, much like madness but so much more like fire. — Cynthia Gael

Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then."
She sat down. Ron looked taken aback.
"Er - all right."
He cleared his throat.
"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow,
Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."
He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed gray and fast asleep.
"Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. I've learned all our course books by heart, of course. — J.K. Rowling

One's attitude toward life makes every possible difference in one's living. You know, you don't have to study a thousand ancient books to discover that fact. But sometimes it needs to be pointed out again that life doesn't change so much as you ...
The day when you stop building your own environment, when you stop building your own surroundings, when you stop waving a magic hand and gracing everything around you with magic and beauty, things cease to be magical, things cease to be beautiful. Well, maybe you've just neglected somewhere back in the last few years to wave that magic hand. — L. Ron Hubbard

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

Republicans stand by their convictions. Stupid, ignorant, world-destroying convictions based on disproven economic fantasies and ancient books full of primitive morality and magic people. But convictions, nonetheless. — Bill Maher

What are we after when we open one of those books? What is it that makes a classic a classic? ... in old-fashioned terms, the answer is that it wll elevate your spirit. And that's why I can't take much stock in the idea of going through a list of books or 'covering' a fixed number of selections, or anyway striving for the blessed state of having read this, or the other. Having read a book means nothing. Reading a book may be the most tremendous experience of your life; having read it is an item in your memory, part of your receding past ... Why we have that odd faith in the magic of having read a book, I don't know. We don't apply the same principle elsewhere: We don't believe in having heard Mendelssohn's violin concerto ...
I say, don't read the classics
try to discover your own classics; every life has its own. — Rudolf Flesch

As long as reading is for us the instigator whose magic keys have opened the door to those dwelling-places deep within us that we would not have known how to enter, its role in our lives is salutary. It becomes dangerous, on the other hand, when, instead of awakening us to the personal life of the mind, reading tends to take its place, when the truth no longer appears to us as an ideal which we can realize only by the intimate progress of our own thought and the efforts of our heart, but as something material, deposited between the leaves of books like a honey fully prepared by others and which we need only take the trouble to reach down from the shelves of libraries and then sample passively in a perfect repose of mind and body. — Marcel Proust

A book a week I heave a sigh;
That Slogan's peremptory cry
I will not hear, I will not heed.
How can They say that I should need
The book They bid me weekly buy?
But Slogans change, as days go by;
My Psyche listens, fluttering shy,
To newer message "Come and Read
A book a week."
To read! to read! O wings that fly
O'er sun-kissed lands, through clouded sky
That bear us on where Great ones lead!
I too must follow, so I plead
For magic wings. I'll read (or try)
A book a week! — Alexander Ireland

I would like to invite you to savour every moment of this experiential journey. Feel the energies of the earth, listen to them calling on the wind, whispering their secrets and beckoning you to explore their mysteries. — Carole Carlton

Charlotte!" said Glenda, one Thursday afternoon while she was washing dishes. "You didn't scrape out your leftover cereal this morning. It's disgusting. Come and scrape it out now."
"I can't," called Charlotte from the computer in the next room. "I'm too busy blowing things up. If I don't blow up ten things in the next five seconds, I'll die! — Jennifer Lott

I recognized it instantly. It was a made-up story, a fantasy, the tale of four kids who went through a magic wardrobe and found themselves in a strange new world. I'd read it more times than I could remember, and although I sneered at the thought of a magical land with friendly, talking animals, there were times when I wished, in my most secret moments, that I could find a hidden door that would take us allout of this place. — Julie Kagawa

Here's what I mean by the miracle of language. When you're falling into a good book, exactly as you might fall into a dream, a little conduit opens, a passageway between a reader's heart and a writer's, a connection that transcends the barriers of continents and generations and even death ... And here's the magic. You're different. You can never go back to being exactly the same person you were before you disappeared into that book. — Anthony Doerr

I needed more knowledge in rigging and knotting. I started collecting books on knots and really learning more and more. That's how it started. And also in magic, of course. With a piece of rope, you can do magic. — Philippe Petit

I believe in magic. Writing is my magic wand, and through my magic I create my own secret world, away from all these worries and responsibilities. Love, honesty and humanity is essential to enter this beautiful world of magic. I dwell among White magical peacocks, glowing unicorns, fire breathing turquoise dragons, talking trees, flying horses, talking wise jackals and wolves, crystal water falls, secret pathways hidden in urban gardens and books with doorways to secret worlds. You need to believe in magic to experience it. — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

She stretched beneath him, bare and aching, held captive by an entirely new form of magic, one she'd thought existed only in books and movies. — Christine Warren

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in the ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic. — Diane Setterfield

It perplexes me how many people write books where everyone comes from the same basic set of backgrounds - middle class, white, straight, etc. It's like writing a book set in a world without coincidences, accidents, and colors. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? It reduces drama and conflicts and narrows the possible variety of points of view. And really, the whole magic of books is to show us the world through someone else's eyes. Experiencing the Other is what novels are for. — Scott Westerfeld

When you write, magic happens. Doors open. People smile and the world is a better place — Alan Dapre

A rich man's soup - and all from a few stones. It seemed like magic! — Marcia Brown

Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space ... — Mario Vargas-Llosa

When I write a book I write the best that I can and so much of that for me is following the book's demands, the subject's requirements - I love books, I always have. They have always been one of the places where I have felt very happy in the world. When I was younger, I loved to read genre fiction - I loved the magic-carpet ride of story! Now I need other things - I need the beautiful particular and strange language and form which brings a writer's book to life in me and speaks to my intellect, and, dare I say it, to my soul. — Micheline Aharonian Marcom

Many trees were pulled out of the ground with their roots crying for water."
The lake was all polluted with thick layers of grease,the grass & flowers were squashed, animals walked around. #kidsbooks "Mikolay & Julia"
Total elocological destruction,said Mikolay trying to use one of the funny long words Julia was always using.
These are not monsters Farina.These are people and building machines. — Magda M. Olchawska

A book had always been a door to another world ... a world much more interesting and fantastical than reality. But she had finally discovered that life could be even more wonderful than fantasy.
And that love could fill the real world with magic. — Lisa Kleypas

The dragon took his other arm. But he is still a dragonslayer, no matter what. — Ruth Ford Elward

I am drawn to writing books about magic and the supernatural because those are the types of books I like to read. I've written many short stories with realistic settings, and I certainly wouldn't rule out realistic novels in the future! — Cassandra Clare

Indie authors write, design, sell. Like magic, skip one and you make must read vanish. — Temple Emmet Williams

All writers believe in the magic of books; Jim Hines has created a system where that magic becomes real, usable, and very definitely not always safe. — Tanya Huff

Part of her wanted simply to sit and stare out of the window, at the lawn, flaky with sodden leaves, and the branches with yellow leaves, or few, or none, she thought, taking pleasure at least in Shakespeare's rhythm, but also feeling old. She took pleasure, too, in the inert solidity of glass panes and polished furniture and rows of ordered books around her, and the magic trees of life woven in glowing colours on the rugs at her feet. — A.S. Byatt

I while yet a youth wrote in a quite large volume three books of magical things, which I called De occulta philosophia, in which whatever was then erroneous because of my curious youth, now, more cautious, I wish to retract by this recantation, for formerly I spent much time and goods on these vanities. — Cornelius Agrippa

My heart almost vaulted out of my chest. I was snuggled against Ryan's shoulder. We were burrowed under the cloak and sleeping bag, and my hand rested on his cheek, about to swat the stray hair that had fallen over my face. This wouldn't have been so bad, if not for one tiny detail.
Ryan was awake. — Sam Dogra

My mother explained the magic with this washing machine the very, very first day. She said, 'Now Hans, we have loaded the laundry. The machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library.' Because this is the magic: you load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines, children's books. — Hans Rosling

Mikolay and Julia live in the same neighborhood and go to
the same school every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. — Magda M. Olchawska

Books were, and always would be, something a little magic and something to respect. — Sally Thorne

The thinnest thing in the world is the border between good and evil ... my next The Opposite Of Magic. — Ivan Stoikov

How many nights and sunrises came to caress our hearts. Then, as often happens, I see I'm just lonely in living the poetry of these moments, and I'm throwing away my magic. I can find refuge in my songs, they surround me like a mother, but then I realize that this hug is becoming a cage, I'm prisoner in my dreams, and I wonder: "may I be condemned to dream forever?" ... I wish I could watch again beauty of the moon, creating a big heart made of shells on the beach, as a castaway's signal ... hoping to be seen by someone who's flying up there ... and loudly saying .. "Hey .. I'm here ! please help me to escape — Alice James Books

Magic happens when the wand of language strikes a stone and makes it melt, touches a spindle and turns it into gold, or taps a trunk and makes it fly. By drawing on a syntax of enchantment that conjures fluidity, ethereality, flimsiness, and transparency, writers turn solidity into resplendent airy lightness to produce miracles of linguistic transubstantiation.

What is the effect of that beauty? How do readers respond to words that create that beauty? In a world that has discredited that particular attribute and banished it from high art, beauty has nonetheless held on to its enlivening power in children's books. It draws readers in, then draws them to understand the fictional worlds it lights up. — Maria Tatar

All the terms used in the science books, 'law,' 'necessity,' 'order,' 'tendency,' and so on, are really unintellectual ... The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. — G.K. Chesterton

Several recent books would have us believe that all we have to do is follow certain steps and God will give us whatever we ask. The authors say, in effect, "Follow this procedure or use these specific words and know for certain that God will give in to your requests." That's not prayer; that's magic. That's not faith but superstition. These are gimmicks intended to manipulate the sovereign God. — R.C. Sproul

You and I. We're going back. People are dying because of this beast. It must be stopped. And we will take the dragon this time, and water the ground with its blood. — Ruth Ford Elward

I've never wanted to be a witch, but an alchemist, now that's a different matter. To invent this wizard world, I've learned a ridiculous amount about alchemy. Perhaps much of it I'll never use in the books, but I have to know in detail what magic can and cannot do in order to set the parameters and establish the stories' internal logic. — J.K. Rowling

The lack of magic is what leads humans to fantasize in the first place. And Alyssa, what a wonderfully powerful force an imagination can be. — A.G. Howard

This is fucking magic, she thought. This isn't some story out of one of Tommy's books. This isn't something you can experiment with in the bathroom. This is not natural, and whatever I am, it isn't natural. A vampire is magic, not science. — Christopher Moore

Reading is my passion and my escape since I was 5 years old. Overall, children don't realize the magic that can live inside their own heads. Better even then any movie. — Eckhart Tolle

Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. — Harper Lee

There was magic, and there was magic. Thanks to Gutenberg, I could no longer pull wands, potions, and light sabers out of books, but when it came to research, give me a well-stocked library and I was a goddamned Merlin. — Jim C. Hines

Perhaps that is the best way to say it: printed books are magical, and real bookshops keep that magic alive. — Jen Campbell

As soon as she stepped in the door, the wonderful smell of books hit her, easing the tension from her neck and shoulders. This was a place of magic to her, where one selection could make you weep with despair and another might make you laugh for days. It was a world of possibility, intelligence, and inspiration, and she'd always secretly considered herself to be queen of this particular kingdom. — Beau North

I had loved magic tricks from the time I was six or seven. I bought books on magic. I did magic acts for my parents and their friends. I was aiming for show business from early days, and magic was the poor man's way of getting in: you buy a trick for $2, and you've got an act. — Steve Martin

A book is not just paper and ink, it's a world full of dreams, imaginations, knowledge, awakening, emboldening and a lot, lot more invaluable treasures. Gift your child a book - introduce them to the joy of reading. — Jyoti Arora

I believe in the magic of books. I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books
whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop with no idea whatsoever of what it is that we want to read and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face. Unblinking. Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for. Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives. — Cecelia Ahern

Everyone always talks about the magic of books being able to take you to other places, to let you see exotic worlds, to make you experience new and interesting things. Well, do you think words alone can do this? Of course not! If you've ever thought that books are boring, it's because you don't know how to read them correctly. From now on, when you read a book, I want you to scream the words of the novel out loud while reading them, then do exactly what the characters are doing in the story. Trust me, it will make books way more exciting. Even dictionaries. Particularly dictionaries. — Brandon Sanderson

There were fat cats and skinny cats. The long-tailed and the bobbed. The daring young leapers, and the old windowsill sleepers. Balls of waddling fluff, smooth-coated prowlers, and hairless ones that looked fragile and wise. The tiger-striped, the ring-tailed, and the ones with matching coloured socks and mittens. There were tabbies and calicos. Manx and Persians. Siamese and Bombay. Ragdolls and Birmans. Maine Coons and Russian Blues. There were Snowshoes and Somalis, Tonkinese and Turkish, and many, many more. Brown and beige and orange and grey and black and white and silver cats, each with gleaming eyes of emerald, or sapphire, or amber. A rainbow of precious stones. — Brooke Burgess

If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be. — Patrick Rothfuss

Oh this? It's a 'bookworm.'
They live in books, and they love to eat important or valuable words. — CLAMP

Thoughts are such fleet magic things. Betsy's thoughts swept a wide arc while Uncle Keith read her poem aloud. She thought of Julia learning to sing with Mrs. Poppy. She thought of Tib learning to dance. She thought of herself and Tacy and Tib going into their 'teens. She even thought of Tom and Herbert and of how, by and by, they would be carrying her books and Tacy's and Tib's up the hill from high school. — Maud Hart Lovelace

It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say! — G.K. Chesterton

This is the twilight shift, dear. Neither here nor there. But if you go into the dark, there'll be no turning back. Stay out of the office and you'll be happy. Trust me. — Steven Poore

I fell in love with books. Some people find beauty in music, some in painting, some in landscape, but I find it in words. By beauty, I mean the feeling you have suddenly glimpsed another world, or looked into a portal that reveals a kind of magic or romance out of which the world has been constructed, a feeling there is something more than the mundane, and a reason for our plodding. — Donald Miller

Two days of wedded bliss and dead dragons. Any regrets yet?"

"Not a one. — Ruth Ford Elward

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

Julia really likes school and she is one of the top students. Mikolay doesn't mind the weekend school because he is allowed
to do lots of magic, which he really likes and is very good at. — Magda M. Olchawska

Remember, there were dragons long before men came into the world. Why, it was none other than The Great Dragons of Yore who invented the idea of knighthood. Yes, yes, that's right! Dragons had knights, Kings, princesses and queens long before men crawled out of the muck. — Sully Tarnish

New Rule: I don't give two fingleberries and a McShit-all that Dumbledore is gay. I never wanted to know who Dumbledore was in the first place. Let alone his sexuality. What concerns me is adults who read 800-page books about magic schoolboys ... and then try to talk to me about it. If I had the slightest interest in homosexuals with powers, I'd be a Republican. — Bill Maher

To the children who loved Harry Potter, I want to say your enthusiasm was the real magic. I so enjoyed being on the journey with you. And to the adults who bought the Harry Potter books and devoured them, I just want to say, those books were for children. — Daniel Radcliffe

It seemed to me at an early age that all human communication - whether it's TV, movies, or books - begins with somebody wanting to tell a story. That need to tell, to plug into a universal socket, is probably one of our grandest desires. And the need to hear stories, to live lives other than our own for even the briefest moment, is the key to the magic that was born in our bones. — Robert R. McCammon

Margo, they're afraid of us. They're afraid of everything.' And then I kept on talking without really thinking, until it turned into a chant:
They're afraid of change, and we must change.
They're afraid of the young, and we are the young.
They're afraid of music, and music is our life.
They're afraid of books, and knowledge, and ideas.
They're most afraid of our magic. — James Patterson

I glare at him and sigh. "Don't you understand what a book is?"
"Obviously."
"Then how can it be boring? It's not just twenty-six little letters all mushed together to make words that link together to tell a story. It's the creation of another world where anything can happen and anyone can be whoever they want to be. It's a crazy, special kind of magic that can transport you out of the real world, to anywhere you want to go. It doesn't matter if it's a made-up universe or it's written in a city you can drive to within an hour. It's what happens within the pages that makes reading so...not boring."

-Emma Hart "Dirty Little Rendezvous (The Burke Brothers Spin-Off #1). — Emma Hart

And she never could remember; and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book. — C.S. Lewis

No, no, it's not in books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into on garment for us. — Ray Bradbury

The llama was wearing a bridle with a rope attached where you might expect to find reins. A greeting card was hanging from his neck:
'Hola Como se llama? Yo me llamo C. Llama.'
During his preschool years, Clay's favorite cartoon had featured a Spanish-speaking boy naturalist who was always saving animals with his girl cousin, and Clay still knew enough of the language to translate:
'Hello. How do you call yourself? I call myself Como C. Llama.'
The llama's name is What is your name? — Pseudonymous Bosch

How hard is it to build an intelligent machine? I don't think it's so hard, but that's my opinion, and I've written two books on how I think one should do it. The basic idea I promote is that you mustn't look for a magic bullet. You mustn't look for one wonderful way to solve all problems. Instead you want to look for 20 or 30 ways to solve different kinds of problems. And to build some kind of higher administrative device that figures out what kind of problem you have and what method to use. — Marvin Minsky

Mikolay took his wand out, touched the cage's lock and said: "Eis Izras" three times.
The door opened at once, unfortunately making lots of noise and waking the humans up.
Mikolay knew a few powerful hexes and he was able to create small flying dragons.
He hoped that he could stop the people, animals, and block the shadows to buy some time. — Magda M. Olchawska

When Mikolay and Julia are not at school, they usually go exploring and adventuring.
Mikolay's and Julia's mummies are both witches and are in charge of fixing things. — Magda M. Olchawska

We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift. — Madeleine L'Engle

I feel an author and an illustrator weave the magic of a children's picture book together. — Sima Mittal

Yet it was . . . Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

When I had my girls, I knew what magic felt like for the first time. I had created people who didn't exist before. Now I write for the same reason. Creating people and their life's stories through my writing is as close to magic as I'll ever get again. — Dori Ann Dupre

As a little girl I always expected that one day adventure would happen to me - someday a tornado would whisk me away to Oz, or I'd fall down a rabbit hole, or David Bowie would kidnap me and take me to his labyrinth where he'd sing me songs and feed me magic peaches. (I still sorta wish David Bowie would kidnap me, but that's beside the point.) As I get older, I realize you have to make adventure happen for yourself. I hope this cookbook helps you, dear reader, to make some tasty adventures for yourself - and maybe throw some really awesome LARP parties. — Cassandra Reeder

It was a tricky quality that suggested, well, magic and things read in books, — Truman Capote

I am not a fan of the magical quick fix in any fiction, including fantasy, scifi and comic books. Unless Dr. Who is involved, and then only because we get to use the phrase 'Timey-wimey wibbliness' which, I'm sure you'll agree, there are not enough occasions to drop into ordinary adult conversation. — Chris Dee

Television and cinema were all very well, but these stories happened to other people. The stories I found in books happened inside my head. I was, in some way, there.
It's the magic of fiction: you take the words and you build them into worlds. — Neil Gaiman

The three books were The Emperor's New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth by Irving Kirsch; Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America by Robert Whitaker; and Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations About a Profession in Crisis by Daniel Carlat. — Robert Whitaker

Books and papers are the basis of good scholarship and sound knowledge," declared Mr Norrell primly. "Magic is to be put on the same footing as the other disciplines. — Susanna Clarke

As much as it was like anything, magic was like a language. And like a language, textbooks and teachers treated it as an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic. It obeyed rules only to the extent that it felt like it, and there were almost as many special cases and one-time variations as there were rules. These Exceptions were indicated by rows of asterisks and daggers and other more obscure typographical fauna which invited the reader to peruse the many footnotes that cluttered up the margins of magical reference books like Talmudic commentary. — Lev Grossman