I wasn’t obsessed by magic. People say, ‘How you can you claim you practiced eight hours a day and weren’t obsessed?’ Well, people go to a job they don’t even like for eight hours a day; it’s not obsessive if it’s something you like.
The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.
I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It’s a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.
When I write my books, actually, I’m known for very logical rule-based magic systems. I write with one foot in fantasy and one foot in science fiction.
I am saying that while popular culture usually portrays practitioners of magic as separate from ordinary people, often biologically different, many people have habits or customs or superstitions that show magic was once a whole lot more democratic.
I feel like I’m stepping into a place of spiritual contemplation every time I enter a studio; it’s always had a certain magic to me that has never worn off with familiarity.
Art is a sense of magic.
I thought magic tricks would be a really good way to start conversations. I looked them up on YouTube and slowly mastered them.
That creates the magic, and that’s the wonderment of the musical process and how precious that is.
Heinrich Heine once imagined the exiled Israelite as a dog who regains his stolen manhood only when he embraces the Sabbath bride. I see western swing performing a similar function in hardscrabble Texas, turning dirt-poor hired hands into Dapper Dans with magic feet at the Saturday night hoe-down.
Every time you perform a magic trick, you’re engaging in experimental psychology. If the audience asks, ‘How the hell did he do that?’ then the experiment was successful.
I’ve always been so attracted to magic.
Magic is the mysteries into which not everyone is so lucky, or unlucky, as to be initiated. It can be affected by belief, the whims of the unseen, harsh language. And it is not. Supposed. To make. Sense. In fact, I think it’s coolest when it doesn’t.
That old black magic has me in its spell, That old black magic that you weave so well; Icy fingers up and down my spine, The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
A lot of the magic that is behind success can be unlocked through mentorships. Mentorships are a fundamental part of the success equation.
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.
It seemed to me that you make magic real by making it a little prosaic, a little difficult and disappointing – never quite as glamorous as the other characters imagine.
When you are interviewing someone, never let your camera person turn off the camera. The second you turn off the camera, they’ll say the magic thing that you’d been looking for the whole interview. People want to relax after the performance is done. Don’t be afraid of awkward silence. That is your friend.
Weightlessness is a wonderful experience. It feels like magic. It really does.
I combine magic and science to create illusions. I work with new media and interactive technologies, things like artificial intelligence or computer vision, and integrate them in my magic.
The state of childhood resonates with life inside a fantasy novel. If you have no control over how you spend large chunks of your day, or are at the mercy of flawed giant beings, then the desire to bend the laws of the world by magic is strong and deep.
I know ‘Vikings’ isn’t really based in magic, but it goes back to Old World spirituality and different religions, and a lot of voodoo.
We took the brains out of the set-top box and put it in the cloud. Having our software in the cloud gives consumers the ability to click their remote control and navigate through thousands of choices in a simple and elegant way. That’s magic.
I don’t want to say too many words about the magic of the Cube, because it’s basically a mystery. It’s like the Mona Lisa smile. It’s both complex and very simple at the same time. And, well, people like it. Even today.
I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic.
I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.
I was this Catholic kid, and I never really lost that. I loved the rituals of Catholicism. The mass is a magic ritual; it’s a transubstantiation, and the stations of the cross – I mean, a crown of thorns? Getting whipped? It’s punk rock.
You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox.
I think that all the talented filmmakers sort of share, I think, a sense of allowing magic to happen; of creating a stable and secure environment for performers to feel they can push to the end of their ability.
I am a fan of magic and fantasy, particularly when it’s grounded in reality.
For me a poem has to sing out of itself and the lilt of it carries the magic.
Acting is reacting… there’s a magic when you’re working with another actor. With voice acting, you’re doing it alone, all in your head. So, you have to re-create that essence by yourself. It’s not necessarily more difficult. It’s just a different set of skills.
I’m one of the most superstitious people I know. There are these two battling parts of me, one is very rational and intellectual, and the other part of me, at my core, I believe in magic in a certain way, and serendipity.
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.
I don’t think ‘Magadheera’ should be remade, nor do I think it will be remade. It is very difficult to recreate the same magic.
When you do an interview with me, you’re talking to a cheap imitation of the person that I really am. There’s no magic in my words, it’s just me talking.
One of the great things to pretend is that you’re not only alright, you’re in great shape. Now to have that come true – I’ve actually gone on stage depressed and that’s worked its magic on me, ’cause if I can convince you that I’m alright, then maybe I can convince me.
Music is a kind of magical thing, and you can’t make magic every time, but you try. Every once in a while it has that magic, and the audience knows that. I probably miss it more than I hit it, but I think that’s what all musicians try for.
I went down and played with Magic Johnson at his all-star game in Atlanta. I remember Magic stopped the game and said, ‘We need you here with us in L.A.’
There’s no one right way to parent, and there’s no magic combination of genders that produces the most well-adjusted child. We all do the best we can at loving our kids and building our families.
Love and magic have a great deal in common. They enrich the soul, delight the heart. And they both take practice.
I think that magic, at its root, is a very abstract notion. There’s no real, approved definition. And, in that sense, it’s like love; you can only see magic by the effect it has on people.
Ever since I was a little kid, whenever my parents would have company over, I would put on shows, whether they would be magic shows, singing shows, dancing shows, little skits.
Your hands are not made to type out memos. Or put paper through fax machines. Or hold a phone up while you talk to people you dislike. One hundred years from now, your hands will rot like dust in your grave. You have to make wonderful use of those hands now. Kiss your hands so they can make magic.
We are thrilled to work with Fun and share the same sentiment that we want do some really exciting and innovative things for the magic community.
The show is being changed right now, by the way. Jeff Burke is doing it for the Magic Kingdom. And I think it will be better, with new birds, master of ceremonies, etc.
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.
In magic, it takes two or three years for me to create a 5-minute illusion for me to get it to the level I want.
The magic of the American experience is that we’ve upheld the rule of law for everybody, everybody treated equally beneath the law.
I intend to do the Penn & Teller show until they pry my cheesy magic wand from my cold dead fingers.
I tell stories. I kind of stumbled on that by trying to combine Jane Austen and magic.
‘Game of Thrones’ isn’t all about magic – it’s way more about political scheming and family tensions – but to be a part of this exclusive magic club is actually really cool.
In America, magic has never been an important part of peoples’ lives.
A dream doesn’t become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.
Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can’t do? She’s channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door.
