Isak Dinesen Quotes

Magic is my paint.

I like to browse in occult bookshops if for no other reason than to refresh my commitment to science.

The 18th century, which is usually held to be the most "materialistic" of epochs, was, in fact, a most "spiritualistic" one; in which ghosts, demons, quacks, philosophers' stones, enchanters' wands, mysteries and mummeries, were as fashionable—as they will probably be again some day.

Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring.

I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose.

Magic, like technology, is a tool.

Indubitably, magic is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgment and practice than in any other branch of physics.

I want witchcraft so bad that I can't stand it. I have wands in my apartment. And I use them sometimes. I walk into the kitchen with my wand, and I come out with something on a platter and I say, 'See, magic happens.' Works every time.

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.

Magic is a state of mind. It is often portrayed as very black and gothic, and that is because certain practitioners played that up for a sense of power and prestige. That is a disservice. Magic is very colorful. Of this, I am sure.

Despite its obscurity, probably no element on the periodic table has as colorful a history as antimony. Money, madness, poison, linguistics, charlatanism, sex - pretty much every theme that runs through the periodic table can be found in Element 51.

The Wizard of Ooze

I'm still a little certain I'm a wizard.

The whole mythological side of 'Twin Peaks' was really down to me, and I've always known about the Theosophical writers and that whole group around the Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century - W. B. Yeats, Madame Blavatsky, and a woman called Alice Bailey, a very interesting writer.

Wizarding is technical to me. When you get something that adds up to more than the sum of its parts, that feeling is magic to me. That's a kind of alchemy.

I have friends who practice witchcraft, and I study tarot myself. I guess, to be specific, I don't want to believe in a world without magic.

The world is magic. Science is but an insipid style of sorcery.

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.

I do not worship the devil. But magic does intrigue me. Magic of all kinds. I bought Crowley's house to go up and write in. The thing is, I just never get up that way. Friends live there now.

You don't get into magic. Magic gets into you.

What is magic? There is the wizard's explanation... wizards talk about candles, circles, planets, stars, bananas, chants, runes and the importance of having at least four good meals every day.

Besides prostitution, magic is one of the oldest art forms that exist.

Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.

perhaps the only magician we have is the artist.