Robert R. McCammon > Quotes

“You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: 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. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves.

After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm.

That’s what I believe.

The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens.

These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It's not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don't know its happening until one day you feel you've lost something but you're not sure what it is. It's like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you 'sir'. It just happens.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“See, this is my opinion: 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.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“After years of having a dog, you know him. You know the meaning of his snuffs and grunts and barks. Every twitch of the ears is a question or statement, every wag of the tail is an exclamation.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“If you were my girlfriend I would give you a hundred lightning bugs in a green glass jar, so you could always see your way. I would give you a meadow full of wildflowers, where no two blooms would ever be alike. I would give you my bicycle, with its golden eye to protect you. I would write a story for you, and make you a princess who lived in a white marble castle. If you would only like me, I would give you magic. If you would only like me.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“They say that somewhere in Africa the elephants have a secret grave where they go to lie down, unburden their wrinkled gray bodies, and soar away, light spirits at the end.”
― Robert R. McCammon, 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 it the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.”
― Robert R. McCammon

“Once upon a time, man had a love affair with fire.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“Maybe crazy is what they call anybody who's got magic in them after they're no longer a child.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“Even the most worthless thing in the world can be beautiful, it just takes the right touch”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“...the magic place of soul-soothing dreams, where the silken sheen of polished glass under soft lights made her think of how lovely Heaven was going to be.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“Many times you will fail. That is the nature of the world, and the truth of life. But when you find your horse again, will go back or will you go forward?”
― Robert R. McCammon

“...hot shouts of neon...”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“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. McCammon, Swan Song

“Twas said better to light a candle than curse the dark...”
― Robert R. McCammon, The Queen of Bedlam

“...just shattered structures rising up like rotten teeth from a diseased jaw.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“Right." He smiled bitterly. "Well, look around. Just look. Have you ever considered the possibility that God might be insane?”
― Robert R. McCammon, They Thirst

“...that in this town prostitutes may give sewing lessons to ladies of the church, pirates my be consulted for their opinions on seaworth by shipbuilders, Christians and Jews may stroll together on a Sunday, and Indians my play dice games with leatherstockings, but let one silver piece fall in a crack between two members of the same profession and it's bloody war.”
― Robert R. McCammon, The Queen of Bedlam

“No one ever grows up. They may look grown-up, but it's just the clay of time. Men and women are still children deep in their hearts." Mrs. Neville”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“Hold onto the magic of being a boy(...) once you lose it you are always begging to find it again.”
― Robert R. McCammon

“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. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves”
― Robert R. McCammon

“It is a contradiction this creek- a hundred thousand years old but renewed with each rainfall.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“Here is my room, in the yellow lamplight and the space heater rumbling: Indian rug red as Cochise's blood, a desk with seven mystic drawers, a chair covered in material as velvety blue-black as Batman's cape, an aquarium holding tiny fish so pale you could see their hearts beat, the aforementioned dresser covered with decals from Revell model airplane kits, a bed with a quilt sewn by a relative of Jefferson Davis's, a closet, and the shelves, oh, yes, the shelves. The troves of treasure. On those shelves are stacks of me: hundreds of comic books- Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, the Spirit, Blackhawk, Sgt. Rock and Easy Company, Aquaman, and the Fantastic Four... The shelves go on for miles and miles. My collection of marbles gleams in a mason jar. My dried cicada waits to sing again in the summer. My Duncan yo-yo that whistles except the string is broken and Dad's got to fix it.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“...and his bones were a cage of ice.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“I had a dog named Jesus once. I crucified him, but he didn't come back to life. Before he died, he told me what to do to the people in the brick house. Off went their heads.”
― Robert R. McCammon

“Johnny James was sitting on the front porch, sipping from a glass of gasoline in the December heat, when the doom-screamer came. ”
― Robert R. McCammon, Something Passed by Stories from the Blue World

“...he was a scream wrapped up in straw, a little, weak, vicious thing gnashing inside a monstrous facade...”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“The demons almost got me! But glory be to Jesus, and when he arrives on his flying saucer from the planet Jupiter I'll be there on the golden shore to kiss his hand!”
― Robert R. McCammon

“I'd like to be everybody in the world' I said. 'I'd like to live a million times.'
'Well'--and here my father gave one of his sagely nods--'that would be a fine piece of magic, wouldn't it?”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“The same river can never be crossed twice. The flowing water has no memory of footprints.”
― Robert R. McCammon, The Five

“Put one foot forward and the other will get you to where you are going~!" Bag Lady, Swan Song”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“I had always wondered what Reverend Lovoy meant when he talked about "grace." I understood it now. It was being able to give up something that it broke your heart to lose, and be happy about it.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life

“This was a dank, sinister chill: the chill of shadows where poison toadstools grown, their ruddy colors beckoning a child to come, come take a taste of candy.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Swan Song

“Rain fell on the roofs of the just and the unjust, the saints and the sinners, those who knew peace and those in torment, and tomorrow began at a dark hour.”
― Robert R. McCammon, Mine