Quotes About Magic

Koschei, Koschei," she whispered. "What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you. Nothing in me was not made by you.

Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.

Just you wait. Papa Koschei is coming, coming, coming, over the hills on his red horse and he's got bells on his boots and a ring in his poket and he knows your name, Marya Morevna.

Coffee is a kind of magic you can drink.

All Librarians are Secret Masters of Severe Magic. Goes with the territory.

After all, in fairy tales, there was only one thing to do. In every story with a long sleep and a waking in it. An easy thing, a pretty thing. Standard currency.

Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume?

She's an old woman possessed of great powers--but aren't all old women possessed of great powers? Occupational hazard, I think.

In addition to all the other kinds of magic there is Yes Magic and No Magic, and Mallow is wonderful fierce at No Magic. Sometimes that is the last magic you can hold on to, when all the rest has gone.

At night, she whispered into the pipes: I hate it here. Please take me away, let me be something other than Marya, something magical, with a round belly. Frighten me, make me cry, only come back.

What was magical at two in the morning was tawdry and cheap and dangerous to your health at two in the afternoon.

Yes, Marya thought, the smell of woodsmoke and old snow pushing back her long black hair. Magic does that. It wastes you away. Once it grips you by the ear, the real world gets quieter and quieter, until you can hardly hear it at all.

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic.

Music has more rules than math or magic and it's twice as dangerous as both or either.

She did not want Fairyland to be full of older girls who wanted to be stars.

I would have run wild through a magical kingdom and never looked back. Talking animals? Yes. Witches and monsters? Yes. Dark queens? Absolutely. Give it right here. I would have said yes to all of it.

If there are spells, they have a right to weave.

Be nice to Fairyland. She is old and tender of heart and when her feelings are hurt, she cries volcanoes.

Did everything that had magic have teeth?

All Librarians are members of the Catalogue. That's what you call a coven when it's made up of Librarians instead of witches. Librarians have sorted and alphabetized all the magic that ever thought to put a rabbit and a hat together. Who do you think invented Special Collections?

Didn't you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman's house.

If Fairyland-Below is Fairyland's shadow, what is the shadow of Fairyland-Below? What's under the underworld?" Ell laughed like thunder rolling somewhere far off. "I'm afraid it's underworlds all the way down, my dearest, darling flying ace.

Shadows are where magic comes from. Your dark and dancing self, slipping behind and ahead and around, never quite looking at the sun.