What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web... (David Abram)
A photograph becomes a work of art when technical skills combine with creative insight to produce visual magic. (David Allio)
I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated. (Francis Bacon)
Many secrets of art and nature are thought by the unlearned to be magical. (Roger Bacon)
-on royalty... Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic. (Walter Bagehot)
- interview with Carol Crenna, December 15, 2012... If you find yourself worrying, go outside, take three breaths, address a tree and quietly say, 'Thank you.' If you can't find a tree, a dandelion will do... Nature is magic. (Robert Bateman)
- Betelgeuse Incident... There is no such thing as magic, supernatural, miracle; only something that's still beyond logic of the observer. (Toba Beta)
The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. (Ray Bradbury)
-Lady of Avalon... Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined Will. But sometimes the Will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control and when to let it go. (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic. (James Broughton)
I see painting as an evocative magic, and there must always be a random factor in magic, one which must be constantly changed and renewed. (William S. Burroughs)
All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. (Thomas Carlyle)
To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all. (Carlos Castaneda)
-Chagall's early work in the Soviet Union by Alexander Kamensky... The stars were my best friends. The air was full of legends and phantoms, full of mythical and fairy tale creatures, which suddenly flew away over the roof, so that one was at one with the firmament. (Marc Chagall)
Only after looking and listening closely can one make these various subtleties work magic. (Lu Chi)
Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience. (Chuck Close)
The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. (Matthew B. Crawford)
- The Minpins... And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. (Roald Dahl)
Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens. (Sammy Davis, Jr.)
I don't know what to think about magic and fairy tales. (Richard Dawkins)
The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end. (Benjamin Disraeli)
And suddenly you know: It's time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings. (Meister Johann Eckhart)
I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school. (Brian Eno)
I am interested in making the simple profound, so my own backyard can be inspirational. I just walk out my door and it's all there. By painting simply, magic happens. (Peter Fiore)
May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. (Neil Gaiman)
While Mojo suggests any art that invokes supernatural powers, for us creators Mojovation means finding magic in what we do. (Robert Genn)
To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful 'magic skills' that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition. (Elizabeth Gilbert)
Grit and guts are the magic ingredients to your success. (Irwin Greenberg)
Although there may be an elusive element of magic in a painting, a 'something special' that may not ever be identified, there is still plenty to be uncovered and learned by analyzing and critiquing various works of art. (Lolita Hamill)
In the end nobody knows how it's done - how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can. (David Hockney)
Art is magic... But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. (Hans Hofmann)
He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. (Washington Irving)
In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard. (Billy Joel)
Movie magic is movie magic and acting magic is acting magic. (Ben Kingsley)
The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle. (Stanley Kubrick)
Creativity isn't magic. It's achievable. (Nita Leland)
-The New York Times, 1981... Everybody remembers his or her first magic show... The attraction of magic, to the amateur magician, derived from the fact that it wasn't magic at all; it was science in the service of illusion. (John Leonard, critic)
Painting is like magic to me. You touch the paper with colors and an image appears! A realist will tell you it's not magic at all but a science of understanding colors and textures. I'd rather look at painting as magic! (Brenda Grounds McCart)
-Boy's Life We all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. (Robert R. McGammon)
People who can paint and talk well at the same time are probably very experienced in both, so they don't need to give each much brain power... the queued problems get processed and sometimes solved. It does feel like magic. (Tatjana Mirkov-Popovicki)
The magic possibility of framing a certain space and time is what brought me to photography. This process of recording elements of 3 dimensions in the flow of time, and fixing them in a 2 dimensional image, creates a new context for the elements of the photograph... (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy)
Resident mockery, give us an hour for magic. (Jim Morrison)
-The Forgotten Garden... She's understood the power of stories. Their magical ability to refill the wounded part of people. (Kate Morton)
-The Magic Flute... How powerful is your magic sound. (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace. (Eugene O'Neill)
Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is
softer and more beautiful. (Norman Vincent Peale)
-A Shadow Passes, 1919... The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. (Eden Phillpotts)
Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange, hostile world and us, a way of seizing the power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires. (Pablo Picasso)
If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite. (Ezra Pound)
- The Prestige... Every magic trick consists of three parts, or acts. The first part is called The Pledge, the magician shows you something ordinary. The second act is called The Turn, the magician takes the ordinary something and makes it into something extraordinary. But you wouldn't clap yet, because making something disappear isn't enough. You have to bring it BACK. Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled. (Christopher Priest)
Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done. (Christopher Priest)
I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning... (Joseph Priestley)
Magic mostly happens when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, work hard through challenges and boredom. (Victoria Prooday)
After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it. (Raymond Queneau)
There's a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out. (Lou Reed)
Remember, a trick isn't magic until it works. (William F. Reese)
If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. (Tom Robbins)
I change the world by changing myself. I am changing the world by loving myself, by enjoying life, by making my personal world a dream of heaven. I change myself, and just like magic, other people start to change. (Don Miguel Ruiz)
Even the simplest little video camera is an astounding tool for journeying through Time. Stories can be coaxed to emerge. It's magic. (Peter Segnitz)
The magical approach is indeed the natural approach to life's experience. It is the adult version of childhood knowledge, the human version of the animals' knowledge, the conscious version of 'unconscious' comprehension. (Seth)
But all the magic I have known / I've had to make myself. (Shel Silverstein)
The world is its own magic. (Shunryu Suzuki)
Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. (J. R. R. Tolkien)
The discovery of magic can happen only when we transcend our embarrassment about being alive, when we have the bravery to proclaim the goodness and dignity of human life, without either hesitation or arrogance. Then magic can descend onto our existence. (Chogyam Trungpa)
When I was nine, my great grandfather, a landscape painter, taught me to mix colors. With his strong hand surrounding my small one, he guided the brush until a calla lily appeared as if by magic on a page of textured watercolor paper. (Susan Vreeland)
HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator's magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing. (Alice Walker)
Mastery is the rudder, Mystery is the sail and Magic the wind to move you in your chosen direction. (Jack White)
Every day use your magic to be of service to others. (Marcia Wieder)
-A Streetcar Named Desire... 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 if that's sinful, then let me be damned for it! (Tennessee Williams)
Always good to roll with the magic. (Liz Wiltzen)
Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician. (Orville Wright)
I don't think that there is anything that is really magical unless it has a terrifying quality. (Andrew Wyeth)
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