Realist Magic Quotes

“Beauty is a nonviolent experience of near death, a warning that one is fragile, like everything else in the universe.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“I call this double truth of a thing its fragility, the inner fragility of a thing is why a thing can exist at all. Fragility is also why anything at all can happen. Existence is incompleteness. This fragility is activated in what is called destruction.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“Beauty is how objects end. Beauty is death.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“For beauty to work, there must be a surface capable of receiving the wound.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“In the event of beauty, a non-self part of my inner space seems to resonate in the colors on the wall, in the sounds pouring into my ears. Hugely amplified, might this resonance actually kill me? “A beautiful way to die” – to be destroyed by vibrations that removed myself from myself.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“Beauty is nonconceptual. Nothing in the object directly explains it.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic

“The mysterious quality of artworks is a signal of the mysterious quality of objects in general. Beauty is a secret that we know exists but whose content we don't know. When we share it with other, it's as if we are in on the same secret. We look at each other in amazement or with knowing look. But it's impossible to specify what this secret is. Only the fact that there is a secret is of any importance. Beauty is based on the raw fact of the secret as such.”
― Timothy Morton, Realist Magic