Magical Realism Quotes

“Magic always happens when you direct your inner powers to the object you want to change.”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“Yes, Latinos dream more. When you live in poverty, when your president is imposed upon you, when they kill someone and no one gets indicted, and when only a few get rich, of course you dream more. It's no coincidence that magic realism happens in Latin America, because for us dreams and aspirations are part of life.”
― Jorge Ramos

“It’s as predictable as the tide and the moon. It ebbs and flows. Death comes and it goes."
- THE WICKED DEEP”
― Shea Ernshaw

“I said, "Who are you really? Why are you giving people money?"
"Everybody wants money," she said, as if it were self-evident. "It makes them happy. It will make you happy, if you let it." We had come out by the heap of grass clippings, behind the circle of green grass that we called the fairy ring: sometimes, when the weather was wet, it filled with vivid yellow toadstools.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“She believed in magic—the magic of places, the magic of people, the magic of coincidences, serendipity, and fortune. She enjoyed wandering through the world with the open mind and curiosity of a four-year-old child. In her world the mystical, mythical, and magical inhabited the same space and time as the ordinary and the practical. At Bethesda Terrace, she always felt close to a source of magic and creativity. It was as if she was tapping into the place where dragons, angels, gods, sorceresses, and demons came to life.”
― Jamie Le Fay, Beginnings

“The relentless onslaught of this stupefying imagery that pounds our inner landscapes flat, a carpet-bombing of the mind. The language of the world, that overwhelms us.”
― Alan Moore

“Forthwith I crush this acid lemon
Freeing myself of the malefic venom
Hither I let thee rotten
Let my curse be forgotten.”
― Camilla Isley, I Wish for You

“Everyone needs sisters.”
― Erin Entrada Kelly, The Land of Forgotten Girls

“Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks [...] He wonders if the poem of the circus could possibly be bottled.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Of course, that’s one of the dreams of modernist literature, whether realist or fantastic: that the more stories we tell each other about such tragedies, the fewer of them there will be. We’re still waiting for the results.”
― Charles Finch

“Chocolate is a kitchen witch’s secret weapon. It makes friends easily, soothes troubled spirits, and is conducive to romance. When nothing else works, go with chocolate.
—Sadie Trevalyn’s Book of Kitchen Witchery”
― Alyssa Goodnight, Just Say Yes

“As researchers of the paranormal, we must understand there are ways to change the rhythm of time within us, ways to change the beat. These ways have been known since the beginnings of civilization, and possibly much earlier. And these ways would require no more effort than simply recognizing the secret rhythms of things. Moreover, we may learn to beat with them and begin to perceive a different kind of space, and ultimately discover an altogether different conception of reality…”
― Ojo Blacke, Dr. Monroe A. Dunlop's Paranormal Studies Lecture Series, Mind and Reality: A Psychedelic Trip to the Doormat of the Unknown: Fictional Nonfiction, Fifth Edition

“The raft was seized, with a noise like needles knitting, and we were hemmed in for winter -- river and the old channel's oxbow lake having frozen solid. By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers...it must have been the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action that had given a common horse wings and changed a woman into a laurel tree.”
― Norman Lock

“You know, it would be much less trouble if you were willing to bat your magic eyelashes.”
― Jamie Le Fay, Disillusion

“...seeing as he sat down on the log the crooked print, the warped indentation in the wet ground which while he looked at it continued to fill with water until it was level full and the water began to overflow and the sides of the print began to dissolve away. Even as he looked up he saw the next one, and, moving, the one beyond it; moving, not hurrying, running, but merely keeping pace with them as they appeared before him as though they were being shaped out of thin air just one constant pace short of where he would lose them forever and be lost forever himself, tireless, eager, without doubt or dread, panting a little above the strong rapid little hammer of his heart, emerging suddenly into a little glade and the wilderness coalesced. It rushed, soundless, and solidified––the tree, the bush, the compass and the watch glinting where a ray of sunlight touched them. Then he saw the bear. It did not emerge, appear: it was just there, immobile, fixed in the green and windless noon's hot dappling, not as big as he had dreamed it but as big as he had expected, bigger, dimensionless against the dappled obscurity, looking at him.”
― William Faulkner, Go Down, Moses

“She kissed him first, and all the rest followed.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Red Garden

“But because I do not wish to be remembered (if I will be remembered) as a self-indulgent fantasist, I'll skip the purple patch for now, however much I wish to write it. I need to make amends for my indifference, for having turned my back on the world in favor of the beauties of the way. I'll try to study cruelty (I regret my own) and render it in more familiar terms.”
― Norman Lock, The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel

“I can’t remember what I’ve done with my lingerie. I look in the containers under my bed, as if my sexual self has been relegated to the wrong side of the mattress. I imagine my husband’s sexuality down there too, our shadow selves making love deep in our unconscious as we cuddle above the mattress as brother and sister.”
― Jalina Mhyana, Dreaming in Night Vision: A Story in Vignettes

“We played with the moon all night, painting faces on its blank cheek, shining its spotlight into sleeping people’s windows. But mostly we just ate the moon, stuck tongues to its surface and felt it dissolve, left chunks of its minty scalp on neighbors’ doorsteps.”
― Jalina Mhyana, Spikeseed

“We could scan each car for terrorists

and lovers she could lean into

my camouflage her head resting on woven trees.

When they come for her body she could run deep
into my uniform

into the forest of me
where they could never find her.”
― Jalina Mhyana, The Wishing Bones

“Jasmine shook her head. She had forgotten about the tales of the Jinn that her father warned her about. Now, being here the memories were returning like a slow and purposeful
spider. With its long, black legs the nightmares would creep into her mind each time she closed her eyes. Then, she would see through the creature’s murky eyes. She would see the carcass of a deer as it lay in the glistening white. She would watch the hyena tearing at its sweated flesh, blood seeping into the snow forming warm pools of death around her feet. And in that moment, the deer shifted. It shifted into the shape of a young boy.”
― Shereen Malherbe, Jasmine Falling

“Magical Realist writer write the ordinary as miraculous and the miraculous as ordinary.”
― Bruce Holland Rogers

“When you stop chasing the wrong things, you give the right ones a fighting chance- Victoria Barron- dedicated attorney and protagonist of Misplaced”
― S.L. Hulen, Misplaced

“If all goes well, we will be back in time for a proper memorial service [for your father], Ben. I promise."

Ben looked up, and all the bitterness was gone from his eyes, replaced somehow by both resignation and determination.

"And if all doesn't go well?" he asked, tightening his grip on Coralee's trusting hand as he led her outside to the driveway.

Kira's flawless features morphed into something like a smile, yet wholly without happiness or humor.

"Then you'll all be meeting up with [your father] soon enough, I expect. Either that, or you shall wish it was so.”
― Caitlin Rush, Curses Beneath Her Feet

“This is the beginning of a new time,” Torius said, “a great moment for us. One of us has learnt the Tongue and freed a princess. I have saved him and killed the guards. No longer will we be slaves. No longer will the guards tell us what to do. No longer will we listen. We will fight till we get what we want!”
A roar exploded from the children around him.
“This is a revolution,” Torius went on. “You all remember the pain that you have felt when the guards have touched you. You all know the shame we carry within us at being treated like this. No more! We will stand!”
― Y.K. Willemse, Rafen

“Él era más sano que el resto de nosotros, pero cuando usted escuchó con el estetoscopio se podía oír las lágrimas burbujeo dentro de su corazón.”
― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“But why are you giving this to me if you don’t believe?"

"Because I know that you do.”
― Adria J. Cimino, Close to Destiny

“I’m Temple Claybourne, an upright, warm-blooded hairy mammal, Caucasian, skidding into my fourth decade of existence, the progeny of meat-eating Anglo-Saxon tribal chieftains, left-handed, flat of foot, with low cholesterol and a predictably receding hairline, carrying a zero debt load, a nervous driver, nervous in crowds, nervous around women, hungry with curiosity, a collector of comforting, unnecessary things.”
― Loyd Boldman, The Gravity Addict

“Dear Time,
You're so beautiful when You stand still.”
― Jon Ng, Dear Time: Circle of Life

“But some, a very come to the gods all on their own They find their way—long and far it is, sometimes—and they wander up to the altars, shy and clumsy and embarrassed and alone, and when they can get the words out, they say, 'Well. Here I am”
― Peter S. Beagle