The Magic Garden Quotes & Sayings

The first time I got a chance to meet Michael was onstage at Madison Square Garden. There were tons of people on the stage, and I just remember losing my mind. Like, Oh my God, that's Michael Jackson right there. I was just over his right shoulder. And then when I finally got a chance to get on the stage with him, I was just shut down. He had the type of magic that you just bowed to. I just said, I love you, and I know you've heard it a million and one times from fans all over the world, but you've meant so much to me as an entertainer, and I love you, and I've admired you all these years. — Usher

I go forth to seek To seek and claim the lovely magic garden Where grasses softly sigh and Muses speak. — Anna Akhmatova

Nick stands up and offers his hand to me. I have no idea what he wants, but what the hell, I take his hand anyway, and he pulls me up on my feet then presses against me for a slow dance and it's like we're in a dream where he's Christopher Plummer and I'm Julie Andrews and we're dancing on the marble floor of an Austrian terrace garden. Somehow my head presses Nick's t-shirt and in this moment I am forgetting about time and Tal because maybe my life isn't over. Maybe it's only beginning. — Rachel Cohn

You thought I was that type: that you could forget me, and that I'd plead and weep and throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, or that I'd ask the sorcerers for some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: my precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not grant your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance. And I swear to you by the garden of the angels, I swear by the miracle-working ikon, and by the fire and smoke of our nights: I will never come back to you. — Anna Akhmatova

The first season of 'Community' stumbled a bit because the plotlines too often veered into realism, but that is not a problem anymore. Not when prize episodes concern a campuswide blanket fort, or a secret garden with a magic trampoline. — Rob Sheffield

If I can't read, if I can't make a simple Indian pudding, then I don't see the point in living much more, really. Because aside from a good book, and perhaps, a fresh morning in a dew-covered garden, few things in life give me as much pleasure as magic of making a truly spectacular dessert. — Sarah Strohmeyer

Fair fresh leaves, and buds - and buds - tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

I fell over twice. It was loud. The garden was black outside our circle of light. The endless night stretched all around us, so we told each other that we had to be close together, together in the dark. — Laure Eve

She isn't a storm or a leader or a king or a war or anyone whose life and death makes noise. The problem is words. There is skin, yes. And then, inside that, there is your language, the casual, inherited magic spells taht make your skin real. It's too late now
even if we could say "Shut up" or "Where's my dinner?" in the first language, the real language, the words weren't born in us. And unless your skin and your language touch each other without interruption, there is no word strong enough to make you understand that it matters that you live. The things that really "stay" are an Orisha, a kind night, a pretended boy, a garden song that made no sense. Those come closer to being enough. — Helen Oyeyemi

But I was not my self, confronted with my thoughts. I should also rise up above my thoughts to my own self. My journey goes there, and that is why it leads away from men and events into solitude. Is it solitude, to be with oneself? Solitude is true only when the self is a desert.73 Should I also make a garden out of the desert? Should I people a desolate land? Should I open the airy magic garden of the wilderness? What leads me into the desert, and what am I to do there? Is it a deception that I can no longer trust my thoughts? Only life is true, and only life leads me into the desert, truly not my thinking, that would like to return to thoughts, to men and events, since it feels uncanny in the desert. My soul, what am I to do here? But my soul spoke to me and said, "Wait." I heard the cruel word. Torment belongs to the desert. — C. G. Jung

What about you, Neville?" said Ron. "Well, my gran brought me up and she's a witch," said Neville, "but the family thought I was all-Muggle for ages. My Great Uncle Algie kept trying to catch me off my guard and force some magic out of me - he pushed me off the end of Blackpool pier once, I nearly drowned - but nothing happened until I was eight. Great Uncle Algie came round for dinner, and he was hanging me out of an upstairs window by the ankles when my Great Auntie Enid offered him a meringue and he accidentally let go. But I bounced - all the way down the garden and into the road. They were all really pleased, Gran was crying, she was so happy. — J.K. Rowling

Already he felt her absence from these skies: on the beach he could only remember the sun-torn flesh of her shoulder; at Tarmes he crushed out her footprints as he crossed the garden; and now the orchestra launching into the Nice Carnival Song, an echo of last year's vanished gaieties, started the little dance that went on all about her. In a hundred hours she had come to possess all the world's dark magic; the blinding belladonna, the caffein converting physical into nervous energy, the mandragora that imposes harmony. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There are many gods ... gods of beauty and magic, gods of the garden, gods in our own backyards, but we go off to foreign countries to find new ones, we reach to the stars to find new ones
... The god of the church is a jealous god; he cannot live in peace with other gods. — Rudolfo Anaya

On turf and curb and bower-roof
The snow-storm spreads its ivory woof;
It paves with pearl the garden-walk;
And lovingly around the tatter'd stalk
And snivering stem its magic weaves
A mantle fair as lily-leaves. — John Townsend Trowbridge

Come little children, I'll take thee away into a Land of Enchantment. Come little children, the time's come to play here in my Garden of Magic. — Sarah Jessica Parker

The unfolding through time of all things from one is the simple message, finally, of every one of the creation myths reproduced in the pages of these volumes-including that of our contemporary biological view, which becomes an effective mythic image the moment we recognize its own inner mystery. By the same magic, every god that is dead can be conjured again to life, as any fragment of rock from a hillside, set respectfully in a garden, will arrest the eye. — Joseph Campbell

Business was doing well, because all the locals knew that dishes made from the flowers that grew around the apple tree in the Waverley garden could affect the eater in curious ways. The biscuits with lilac jelly, the lavender tea cookies, and the tea cakes made with nasturtium mayonnaise the Ladies Aid ordered for their meetings once a month gave them the ability to keep secrets. The fried dandelion buds over marigold-petal rice, stuffed pumpkin blossoms, and rose-hip soup ensured that your company would notice only the beauty of your home and never the flaws. Anise hyssop honey butter on toast, angelica candy, and cupcakes with crystallized pansies made children thoughtful. Honeysuckle wine served on the Fourth of July gave you the ability to see in the dark. The nutty flavor of the dip made from hyacinth bulbs made you feel moody and think of the past, and the salads made with chicory and mint had you believing that something good was about to happen, whether it was true or not. — Sarah Addison Allen

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

Child development: Most damaging course of action is attempting to keep children from experience or protect them from pain, for it is this time that children learn that life is a magic thing, if "not a rose garden." The parent's role is primarily to stand by with a good supply of band-aids. — Leo Buscaglia

The bus here because they lost Rosa Parks's bus."

"Who lost Rosa Parks's bus?"

"White people. Who the fuck else? Supposedly, every February when schoolkids visit the Rosa Parks Museum, or wherever the fuck the bus is at, the bus they tell the kids is the birthplace of the civil rights movement is a phony. Just some old Birmingham city bus they found in some junkyard. That's what my sister says, anyway."

"I don't know."

Cuz took two deep swallows of gin. "What you mean, 'You don't know'? You think that after Rosa Parks bitch-slapped white America, some white rednecks going to go out of their way to save the original bus? That'd be like the Celtics hanging Magic Johnson's jersey in the rafters of the Boston Garden. No fucking way. — Paul Beatty

To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did. — Allan J. Hamilton

I think it was in the Rose Garden where I issued this brilliant statement: If I had a magic wand
but the president doesn't have a magic wand. You just can't say, 'low gas.' — George W. Bush

When Daddy's garden is ready
it is filled with words that make me laugh
when I say them-
pole beans and tomatoes, okra and corn
sweet peas and sugar snaps,
lettuce and squash.

Who could have imagined

so much color that the ground disappears
and we are left
walking through an autumn's worth
or crazy words
that beneath the magic
of my grandmother's hands

become

side dishes. — Jacqueline Woodson

Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one grasps the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the modern bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out garden gate. He and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of course, that such are of the right make. After that they have nothing to think about but the old sweet tale. Down shady lanes, through busy towns on market days, merrily roll the wheels of the "Bermondsey Company's Bottom Bracket Britain's Best," or of the "Camberwell Company's Jointless Eureka." They need no pedalling; they require no guiding. Give them their heads, and tell them what time you want to get home, and that is all they ask. While Edwin leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in Angelina's ear, while Angelina's face, to hide its blushes, is turned towards the horizon at the back, the magic bicycles pursue their even course. — Jerome K. Jerome

Re-programming your mind, body & spirit is like planting a garden, if the soil isn't right nothing will grow. — Nikki Rowe

As soon as he stood in front of her, she folded her arms and looked cross.
"You don't have any gardening skills. You turned down a prestigious job to weed the garden?
"I will be rewarded richly in treasures untold."
She raised a brow.
"I've heard dragon-shifters pay a lot of money to merchants and the like.
"Aaagh, but you are also a dragon-shifter of a sort.
Yes, but I am a gardener, which means I don't go on high-risk missions to earn my gold. — Terry Spear

In those sticky summer nights in South London our windows stay open and our tiny apartment becomes our secret garden. The magic of the secret garden is that it exists in our imagination. There are no limits, no borderlines. The secret garden leads to the marigolds of Mogadishu and the magnolias of Kingston and when the heat turns us sticky and sweet and unwilling to be claimed by defeat we own the night. We own our bodies. We own our lives. — Diriye Osman

Not many people know this, but when Yes first started doing club dates back in 1968, '69, we did a few tracks from 'The Magic Garden' album in our set. We just loved the harmonies that the 5th Dimension had as well. — Chris Squire

Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can plunge a family into conflict. They believe that the hands of a human beast will smoke when he slays a victim, and that this will cause him shame when a young maiden takes up residence in his home. They believe a thousand other simple things.
I ask of you a little of this childlike sympathy and, to bring us luck, let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's "Open Sesame":
Once upon a time ... — Jean Cocteau

The Magic in this garden has made me stand up and know I am going to live to be a man. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all ... much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes. — Beverley Nichols

I wanted to write you a story about magic. I wanted rabbits appearing from hats. I wanted balloons lifting you into the sky. It turned out to be nothing but sadness, war, heartbreak. You never saw it, but there's a garden inside me. — Shane Jones

Monet's garden must be included with his works, because he combined the magic of an adaptation of nature with the work of a painter of light. An extension of the studio into the openair, with color tones lavishly spread out on all sides to exercise the eye with seductive vibrations, from which a feverishly aroused retina expects unquenchable joy. — Georges Clemenceau

And the roses - the roses! Rising out of the grass, tangled round the sun-dial, wreathing the tree trunks and hanging from their branches, climbing up the walls and spreading over them with long garlands falling in cascades - they came alive day by day, hour by hour. Fair fresh leaves, and buds - and buds - tiny at first but swelling and working Magic until they burst and uncurled into cups of scent delicately spilling themselves over their brims and filling the garden air. Colin — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath. — Michael Pollan