Magic Realism Authors

"He wondered why it was only when you were at the end of your life that it was possible to view it with honesty and truth."

"Other people’s judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something."

"I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That’s the secret, you know. That’s the way you change your fate."

"that was kind of the '60s mentality, too—you didn't need to be published, that was mainstream. You just wanted to be an artist and create something."

"For people who want to be a writer—and maybe this is true for anything you want to be in life—if one person believes in you, that's enough. And my grandmother really believed in me."

"Even though laws have changed we still have so many social constraints and so many rules that we set for ourselves and that society sets for us. It’s very difficult still to be a woman."

"For me, reading and magic always went together...For me, literature and magic have always gone together in terms of subject matter but also in what literature does to a reader – it casts a magic spell."

"In a way, I feel survival is always my subject matter."

"I have no guilt regarding my love of fantasy and science fiction, only pleasure. I grew up reading the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I chuckle over how this “genre” has become mainstream and how time travel, alternative universes and magic are now so everyday. Plus, no one could ever feel guilty about reading writers like Ursula K. Le Guin and Philip K. Dick."

"no book makes me furious. Maybe sad, or lost, or confused, but mostly joy and wonder are the emotions involved. That’s why I prefer books to people."

"you can't run away by ignoring the truth. Truth follows you; it comes in through open windows and drifts under doors. When it comes to sorrow, no one is immune. (preface)"

"I've always believed there is a very thin line that separates readers and writers. You make a leap over that line when there's a book you want to read and you can't find it and you have to write it yourself. (preface)"

"Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity."

"Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen."

"This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed."

"What they held in common was their aloneness, and in time, thrown together, with no world other than their own, they grew close. (p103)"

"Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think. (p59)"

"No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way. (p84)"

"I never even believed in happiness. I didn't think it existed. Now look at me. I'm ready to believe in just about anything." (p161)"

"Many of us know what it's like to try to escape a family legacy of one sort or another, only to discover that in the long run we carry our heritage with us no matter how far we might run."

"The family dynamics are complex; and as often happens in our own lives, how we view the people close to us, even when they are fictional characters, depends on where we stand in the world at that time."

"I believed anything can happen. It was a huge escape for me as reader. I loved anything that could remove me from reality and make me see possibilities. Fiction in general gives you the freedom of exploring the truth without boundaries, to get to a deeper truth, and fairy tales have always been my model."

"I always feel you're writing the book you couldn't find, so you have to write it yourself."

"I believe literature can change things"

"For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street. It didn't matter what the problem was-lightning, or locusts, or a death by drowning. It didn't matter if the situation could be explained by logic, or science, or plain bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of trouble or the slightest misfortune, people began pointing their fingers and placing blame. Before long they'd convinced themselves that it wasn't safe to walk past the Owens house after dark, and only the most foolish neighbors would dare to peer over the black wrought-iron fence that circled the yard like a snake. (beginning)"

"I loved magic from the start, beginning with the stories my Russian grandmother told me. If "magic" was in the title of a book, I was bound to find it. In the world of fairy tales, the amazing is recounted in a matter-of fact tone, with the practical and the magical living side by side. One day there is a knock at the door, or a rose that blooms through the winter, or a spindle that must be avoided at all costs. It was the melding of the magical and the everyday that was most affecting to me as a reader, for the world I lived in seemed much the same. People you loved could disappear, through death or divorce; they could turn into heroes or beasts. My personal experience and my childhood reading left me longing for a world in which anything could happen, magic or not, on an ordinary day."

"the Germans had researched her family; they were very thorough after all, and they knew things about her grandfather that she herself didn't know. She would think of this in the camp they took her to after she was arrested, how little she knew about the person she loved most in this world. (p214)"

"For me, magic is reading and writing."

"The persecution of people who are different, whether it's women as witches, whether it's Jews, whoever it is, it always comes from the same place of being against anyone who's different. Fear of the other."

""We must hope for the best," she told the girl. She might have said more if she'd had the freedom to speak her mind, but in her formation she hadn't been given the choice to confide what she felt. If she could do so there would have been much she would have said: how green the verdant countryside was, how bright the light had become, how grateful she was to her maker each and every minute, how the birds in the treetops could be heard even when the train rumbled by, how the first of the season's bees hit against the windowpanes as if searching for flowers, how absolutely marvelous it was to be in the world. (p72)"

"This is how it began, out of water, out of clay, out of air, when it was not expected, when it should have never happened, when no one else understood who she was. (p113)"

"I didn't believe in writers block until I had it. After 9/11 I couldn't write and the way I got out of it was to read one of my favorite authors, Ray Bradbury...(Why couldn't you write after 9/11?) AH: I was so depressed and hopeless about the state of the world. When I re-read Fahrenheit 451, a book about how important books are, I was reminded of the reason to write."

"What you dream, you can grow."

"“What is a revolutionary…if not the architect of a new way of life?”"

"“They felt as if they were two glasses of water being poured into one larger container. Swirling and settling in the darkness.”"

"“This place is too pure for the Church. No, let the Church own the giant basilicas and ornate cathedrals. Let the Church own altars encrusted with gold and chambers draped in velvet. This place is for God and His creatures...for you and for me. This patch of salt will be here still after we’ve all expired, and after the church bells have tumbled to the ground, and after the towers have crumbled and washed out to sea. And even when the sun is silent and nothing but a ball of frozen, burnt-out gas, we’ll roam these flowing wisps of grass....”"

"“I think we’re all a little bit crazy. But once we figure that out, we can start doing something about it.”"

"“She remembered her father’s words one day as they sat alone in the drugstore. He had said, waving his arms in a grand gesture, ‘It took me years to figure out that what truly heals is not all these drugs and medicines. No, no señorita. Only love can heal. The love of between two people. The love of family and home. The love you hear in a song or see in a painting or design. El amor vive eterno.’ Love lives eternal.”"

"“So strong had his voice become that people on neighboring ranches and farms would drag their rocking chairs onto their patios on the nights they knew he was visiting and listen to the corridos he and Fernando Cisneros sang, their voices carried on the gentle breezes of the Gulf for miles on end.”"

"“His father had yearned to give his family the American Dream, to make up for the Mexican Nightmare he had lived as an orphan, roaming from town to town begging for food during the Revolution, sleeping wherever he could find shelter or work. And still he toiled in the darkness of his tire shop on the south side of the river to support the family he both adored and despised on El Otro Lado. But, it was obvious to Fulgencio that his father’s daily crossing of the river failed to cleanse him of his demons, failed to purify him of his tormented thoughts. There were times when his father just had to hit someone, anyone standing nearby.”"

"“But now those days seemed long gone, as distant as the feeble stars dimmed by the growing lights of the city. And although his father would assault him no further with his fists or with his belt, a lonesome wrath twisted through him like a venomous knife, like the hunger he had known as a child, eating the thrice-refried beans that tasted like the dirt that mingled with the tears on the floor beneath the kitchen table. Maybe he had been given a chance at this Sueño Americano, but he felt inexplicably robbed of something greater.”"

"“Don’t be afraid to love. If you love, you’ll never truly be alone.”"

"“The beauty of Catholicism,” he had pontificated to his grandson, “is that even if you spent your entire life sinning, you can die moments after repenting and still get into Heaven. So live it up, Fulgencio. Just don’t let death catch you by surprise.”"

"“Standing in that same hut, all these years later, he fastened a bolo tie around his neck. He threw a black western jacket over his shoulders in one compact motion. He secured his gun in its shoulder holster. And he straightened his black Stetson with one hand while he combed his mustache with the other. He didn’t need a looking glass to tell him how he looked. It was high noon and time to go to the funeral. To meet Carolina once again. He kissed the ghost of his grandfather playing solitaire at the table. He plucked a single white rose that had sprung from the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe on the adobe wall. And he ducked into the blasting sun.”"

"“If you’re not careful, the blood that you carry inside will turn those dreams that you so love into nightmares.”"

"“You don’t do the right thing because it’s easy. You do it because it is right.”"

"“I need your help to find out who killed me.”"

"“Justice is not for sale.”"

"“Discrimination is evil, but evil does not discriminate.”"

"“[D]on’t get angry, don’t lose your temper, be patient, and try to see the other person’s perspective, try to find a positive way through the challenge.”"