The Magic Hour Quotes & Sayings

A Farewell For a while I shall still be leaving, Looking back at you as you slip away Into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all alive, believing That in a single poignant hour We did say all that we could ever say In a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. After a while we shall be cut in two Between real islands where you live And a far shore where I'll no longer keep The haunting image of your eyes, and you, As pupils widen, widen to deep black And I am able neither to love or grieve Between fulfillment and heartbreak. The time will come when I can go to sleep. But for a while still, centered at last, Contemplate a brief amazing union, Then watch you leave and then let you go. I must not go back to the murderous past Nor force a passage through to some safe landing, But float upon this moment of communion Entranced, astonished by pure understanding - Passionate love dissolved like summer snow. — May Sarton

Time must have covered it over
with roses so
it would not be remembered.
One particular rose,
that has an unexpected magic,
on top of each lonely hour of gold
or shadows,
a place just right to hold painful memories.
So that among the divine
and joyful
climbing roses, scarlet, white,
which would leave no room for the past,
the soul would be
wound into
the body. — Juan Ramon Jimenez

Her hand is close to my arm. My options are limited. I can't run away. I can't handle this.
I lose myself in food.
The rich, wet texture of melting chocolate. The way good aged goat cheese coats your tongue. The silky feel of pasta dough when it's been pressed and rested just enough. How the scent of onions changes, over an hour, from raw to mellow, sharp to sweet, and all that even without tasting. The simplest magic: how heat transforms. — Jael McHenry

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 Garcia Marquez

The light is the color of brandy seeping. It has a taste. Your skin tastes it, like you're all over tongues. The taste is sugar-cane, slowly rotting, turning into the great god rum. It's always that magic hour those film-boys love to shoot down here. Always gold. — Catherynne M Valente

La luna hung beautifully bright over the horizon, in a sky still dark. Cold breezes blew over the river and ruffled the tall grasses along the bank, making them rustle and chatter. In their waving fronds I sensed small animals stirring. The pure song of a nightingale, a rossinhol, rang across the water, ending in a trill. It was an hour for sprites and fairies. What magic might lurk among the riverbank grasses? Anything was possible just before dawn. — Julie Berry

I wouldn't do the 'Magic Hour' again, but I would do TV again. The 'Magic Hour' is not me. Anything I would do, I would have to be me. That is how it would work. — Magic Johnson

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

He taught me to stand on a street corner or in a room for an hour - or two or three - waiting for that great epiphany of a moment, the wondrous combination of subject, light, and composition. And something else: the inexplicable magic that made the image dive right into your heart. — Lynsey Addario

It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more. — Herman Hesse

What magic shall solve us the secretOf beauty that's born for an hour? — Madison Cawein

table sat an antique ormolu clock, its hands frozen on the twelve and the ten, 11:50. The magic hour. The time when Zee's ghosts appeared in the greenhouse wall. Bits and pieces of two scenarios were coming back to her, fitting together like a child's jigsaw puzzle. She had, indeed, come to this place - Mathew Brady's New York studio - a short time earlier to have her portrait made — Becky Lee Weyrich

Emily," whispered Teddy, "you're the sweetest girl in the world."

The words have been said so often by so many millions of lads to so many millions of lasses, that they ought to be worn to tatters. But when you hear them for the first time, in some magic hour of your teens, they are as new and fresh and wondrous as if they had just drifted over the hedges of Eden. Madam, whoever you are, and however old you are, be honest, and admit that the first time you heard those words on the lips of some shy sweetheart, was the great moment of your life. — L.M. Montgomery

Youth, like a magic bird, has flown away
He sang a little morning-hour in May
Sang to the rose, his love, that too is gone
Whither is more than you or I can say. — Omar Khayyam

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die. — Alan Moore

Narrowing her eyes, Jocasta ground her teeth together and stalked toward the source of the magic. Her walking stick thudded against the ground in time with her step. She drew her cloak about her bony shoulders, huddling into it against the chill of the late October air. Her bones were too old to be traipsing about at this hour of the night, but that was what came of being the head of the SALEM Council. — Violet Merriweather

This is your success and this is the magic hour, the golden time before the time. Just be in it. You earned it. Don't spread it and don't pull on it and don't push it and don't share it and don't examine it. This is it. — Caroline Kepnes

If you want to understand what a year of life means, ask a student who just flunked his end-of-the-year exams. Or a month of life: speak to a mother who has just given birth to a premature baby and is waiting for him to be taken out of the incubator before she can hold him safe and sound in her arms. Or a week: interview a man who works in a factory or a mine to feed his family. Or a day: ask two people madly in love who are waiting for their next rendezvous. Or an hour: talk to a claustrophobia sufferer stuck in a broken-down elevator. Or a second: look at the expression on the face of a man who has just escaped from a car wreck. Or one-thousandth of a second: ask the athlete who just won the silver medal at the Olympic Games, and not the gold he trained for all his life. Life is magic, Arthur, and I know what I'm saying because since my accident I appreciate the value of every instant. So I beg you, let's make the most of all the seconds that we have left. — Marc Levy

At this sunset hour, the canyon walls are indescribably beautiful and I fear the magic of photography can never record what I see now. The tall spires near the canyon's top and the walls of the canyon up there look as if God had reached out and swiped a brush of golden paint across them, gilding these rocks in the bright glow of the setting sun. — Barry Goldwater

It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote ... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic ... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did — John Fowles

Together they will spend a happy hour seated side by side ... , while Ivy's tender hand guides Duffy's as he traces out laboriously, in pencil, over and over until he has them off pat, the magic letters of his name. More than the wedding itself, that little ceremony there under the lamp, all silent save for the soft scratching of graphite on paper, will mark the true beginning of their life together. — John Banville

You're never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour. — Bill Gates

As every blossom fades
and all youth sinks into old age,
so every life's design, each flower of wisdom,
attains its prime and cannot last forever.
The heart must submit itself courageously
to life's call without a hint of grief,
A magic dwells in each beginning,
protecting us, telling us how to live.

High purposed we shall traverse realm on realm,
cleaving to none as to a home,
the world of spirit wishes not to fetter us
but raise us higher, step by step.
Scarce in some safe accustomed sphere of life
have we establish a house, then we grow lax;
only he who is ready to journey forth
can throw old habits off.

Maybe death's hour too will send us out new-born
towards undreamed-lands,
maybe life's call to us will never find an end
Courage my heart, take leave and fare thee well. — Hermann Hesse

If you'd cured Henry the Seventh's TB with a course of ethambutol, or given Isaac Newton an hour's access to the Hubble telescope, or shown an off-the-shelf 3-D printer to the regulars at the Captain Marlow in the 1980s, you would have had the M-word thrown your way, too. Some magic is merely normality that you're not yet used to. — David Mitchell

For the next hour and a half he tried all the magic he could think of. He cast spells of remembering, spells of finding, spells of awakening, spells to concentrate the mind, spells to dispel nightmares and evil thoughts, spells to find patterns in chaos, spells to find a path when one was lost, spells of demystification, spells of discernment, spells to increase intelligence, spells to cure sickness and spells to repair a limb that is shattered. Some of the spells were long and complicated. Some were a single word. Some had to be said out loud. Some had only to be thought. Some had no words at all but consisted of a single gesture. Some were spells that Strange and Norrell had employed in some form or other every day for the last five years. Some had probably not been used for centuries. Some used a mirror; two used a tiny bead of blood from the magician's finger; and one used a candle and a piece of ribbon. But they all had this in common: they had no effect upon the King whatsoever. — Susanna Clarke

Unfortunately, the Best Lord had condemned both vehicles as unsafe and instead I now leased a Pack Jeep I called Hector. Equipped with dual engines, Hector worked during magic or tech. He didn't go very fast, especially during magic, but so far he hadn't stalled on me either. As long as our high-speed chases stayed under forty-five miles an hour, we would be all set. — Ilona Andrews

Not too many years ago, the names of our perfumes bore testimony to such things. There was a popular scent called Tabu, there was Sorcery, My Sin, Vampire, Voodoo, Evening in Paris, Jungle Gardenia, Bandit, Shocking, Intimate, Love Potion, and L'Heure Bleue - The Blue Hour. Nowadays what do we find? Vanderbilt, Miss Dior, Lauren, and Armani, perfumes named after glorified tailors" - there were murmurs and gasps in the audience - "names that evoke not the poetic, the erotic, the magic, but economic status, social snobbery, and the egomania of designers. Perfumes that confuse the essence of creation with the essence of money. How much sustenance can the soul receive from a scent entitled Bill Blass? — Tom Robbins

It was the Magic Hour, the moment in time when every leaf and blade of grass seemed to separate, when sunlight, burnished by the rain and softened by the coming night, gave the world an impossibly beautiful glow. — Kristin Hannah

We can't get through - it'll take ages. . . ." Harry looked up at the tunnel ceiling. Huge cracks had appeared in it. He had never tried to break apart anything as large as these rocks by magic, and now didn't seem a good moment to try - what if the whole tunnel caved in? There was another thud and another "ow!" from behind the rocks. They were wasting time. Ginny had already been in the Chamber of Secrets for hours. . . . Harry knew there was only one thing to do. "Wait there," he called to Ron. "Wait with Lockhart. I'll go on. . . . If I'm not back in an hour . . ." There was a very pregnant pause. "I'll try and shift some of this rock," said Ron, who seemed to be trying to keep his voice steady. "So you can - can get back through. And, Harry - " "See you in a bit," said Harry, trying to inject some confidence into his — J.K. Rowling

You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun
and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist
that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists
a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles. — Paulo Coelho

Tonight sucks. And look at me. Look at - look at stupid Buffy. Too dumb for college, and-and-and freak Buffy, too strong for construction work. And-and my job at the magic shop? I was bored to tears even before the hour that wouldn't end. And the only person that I can even stand to be around is a ... neutered vampire who cheats at kitten poker. — Joss Whedon

Despite the hour, customers already flooded the market, men, women, and children of every color and race looking for the magic cure to their problems. They were what allowed the poachers to exist. They'd stop poaching if people stopped buying. — Ilona Andrews

[On Venice:] Every hour of the day is a miracle of light. In summer with daybreak the rising sun produces such a tender magic on the water that it nearly breaks one's heart. — Peggy Guggenheim

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

The sun was still out, wouldn't even start to set for an hour, but the early evening still had that "magic hour" feeling. The air was warm and breezy. The houses looked sparkling with windows reflecting the still bright sun. — Victoria Kahler

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

Stories ought not to be just little bits of fantasy that are used to wile away an idle hour; from the beginning of the human race stories have been used - by priests, by bards, by medicine men - as magic instruments of healing, of teaching, as a means of helping people come to terms with the fact that they continually have to face insoluble problems and unbearable realities. — Joan Aiken

For a while I shall still be leaving, looking back at you as you slip away into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all are alive, believing that in a single poignant hour we did say all that we could ever say in a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind. — Hermann Hesse

It was deep afternoon when shadows begin to grow, light becomes gold, and you realize that this particular day has reached its destiny. Like old age, it's not yet over, but there's no denying the time of day. — Vicki Covington

Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping silence. — Marcel Proust

In less than a quarter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; — Charles Dickens

I enjoy sports movies that don't sugarcoat. One thing that irritates me about sports movies is that they're like, 'The magic of the ball,' and 'The magic of the stadium.' It ain't that magical. When you get hit coming across the middle at 25 miles per hour, the magic's over. — Terry Crews

It's the witching hour once more-
When the Muse comes out to play.
He calls me through that magic door-
Where galaxies of worlds await! — Belle Whittington

All the wild sweetness of the flower
Tangled against the wall.
It was that magic, silent hour ...
The branches grew so tall
They twined themselves into a bower.
The sun shown ... and the fall
Of yellow blossom on the grass!
You feel that golden rain?
Both of you could not hold, alas,
(both of you tried, in vain)
A memory, stranger. So I pass ...
It will not come again. — Katherine Mansfield

I believe that my whole creative life stemmed from this magic hour under the stars on that hilltop. — Ruth St. Denis

When the magic hour arrives, my thoughts center on light rather than on the landscape. I search for perfect light, then hunt for something earthbound to match with it. — Galen Rowell

But then in middle school science, Mr. Martinez asked who among us had ever fantasized about living in the clouds, and everyone raised their hand. Then Mr. Martinez told us that up in the clouds the wind blew one hundred and fifty miles an hour and the temperature was thirty below zero and there was no oxygen and we'd all die within seconds."
"Sounds like a nice guy."
"He specialized in the murder of dreams, Hazel Grace.let me tell you. You think volcanoes are awesome? Tell that to the ten thousand screaming corpses at Pompeii. You still secretly believe that there is an element of magic to this world? It's all just soulless molecules bouncing against each other randomly. Do you worry about who will take care of you if your parents die? As well you should, because they will be worm food in the fullness of time. — John Green

Grover went off with his satyr friends to spread the word about our strange encounter with the magic of Pan. Within an hour, the satyrs were all running around agitated, asking where the nearest espresso bar was. — Rick Riordan