Quotes About Magic Realism

#1. When people use the term magic realism, usually they only mean 'magic' and they don't hear 'realism', whereas the way in which magic realism actually works is for the magic to be rooted in the real. It's both things. It's not just a fairytale moment. It's the surrealism that arises out of the real.

Salman Rushdie

#2. I'm fascinated by the magic realism used by many writers. I think it goes hand-in-hand with the Indian experience. It's a very different way of viewing the world.

Joseph Boyden

#3. All things in my novels are real for me. Some western critics said that Garcia Marquez's novels are magic realism. However, I believe that Marquez must have experienced everything in his novels.

Haruki Murakami

#4. My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day.

Angela Carter

#5. Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.

Alice Hoffman

#6. Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don't know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It's just accepting that we don't know everything and everything is possible.

Isabel Allende

#7. I am not into the unrealistic realm of magic realism where birds talk.

Vikas Swarup

#8. Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around.

Terri Windling

#9. Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.

Sam Neill

#10. I have always loved magic realism as a form of writing. I have also been fascinated for a long time with the intersection of science and religion.

Alan Lightman

#11. A masterwork. A particularly American magic realism that touches the heart of race and childhood in our country; it's 100 Years of Solitude for an entire generation of American Baby Boomers, and deserves the widest possible audience.

Ellen Kushner

#12. I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!

Tennessee Williams

#13. 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

#14. I don't want realism. I want magic!

Tennessee Williams

#15. All the latchkey children cursed and smashed bottles, teased about underwear, and puffed on those unfiltered cigarettes that only the cowboys could roll.

Bremer Acosta

#16. The stars and planets don't disappear just because it's daytime.

Tami Egonu

#17. Carefully studying the delicate form of the doll, she was thinking how easy it was to wish for things as a child. Then nothing seemed impossible. Growing up, one realizes how many things one cannot wish for, the things that are forbidden, sinful. Indecent.

Laura Esquivel

#18. Reviewers said Ghost Country was rich, astonishing and affecting in the way it blended comedy, magic, and a gritty urban realism in a breathtaking ride along Chicago's mean streets.

Sara Paretsky

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.

Ben Okri

#22. Don't forget that for now it's strawberry season

Clarice Lispector

#23. At times all you need is a bottle of fine old wine, a mellifluous piece of music playing in the background and a good book to spend the entire night in a magical bliss!

Avijeet Das

#24. To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story.

Sarah Addison Allen

#25. Forthwith I crush this acid lemon
Freeing myself of the malefic venom
Hither I let thee rotten
Let my curse be forgotten.

Camilla Isley

#26. No one can stop death, Omari. It is normal and certain. And nothing should get in the way of a person's true destiny.

Stephen Whitfield

#27. Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass.
Neither one had spoken a word.

Toni Morrison

#28. So what if those stupid roosters don't want to crow?
If we've learned to live without men, we can learn to live without cocks.

James Canon

#29. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - Don't turn the light on!

Tennessee Williams

#30. What you must do," she continued, "you will. Your mission will be as clear to you and as demanding as your heartbeat. Everything else is just a waste of your time.

Stephen Whitfield

#31. Her beauty was ethereal, knocking on the door of the part of his psyche that still believed in magic and miracles.

D.A. Henneman

#32. People tend to focus on the "magic" more than the "realism." But, like all fiction, fantasy arrives at truth via the road of untruth.

Salman Rushdie

#33. To his shock, as Saarang turned the first page, the words slowly transformed into small cylinders, except for one-letter words which preferred being spheres, and started rolling toward the vertical edges of the book.

Pawan Mishra

#34. Standing there in the cold wind... I began to doubt if any of it had ever been real. God. The magic box. The talking butterfly. And if that were true, what an empty world this was.

Inio Asano

#35. You know, it would be much less trouble if you were willing to bat your magic eyelashes.

Jamie Le Fay

#36. The beginning of conscious life was the end of illusion, the illusion of non-being, and the eruption of the real. The triumph of realism over magic, of is over seems.

Ian McEwan