Magic for Beginners Quotes

“The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“The Customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an asshole. That's the first rule of retail.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Fox is a television character, and she isn’t dead yet. But she will be, soon. She’s a character on a television show called The Library. You’ve never seen the Library on TV, but I bet you wish you had.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Charley looked like someone from a Greek play, Electra, or Cassandra. She looked like someone had just set her favorite city on fire.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“You should never poison a witch.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“When Carleton was three months old, Henry had realized that they’d misunderstood something. Babies weren’t babies—they were land mines; bear traps; wasp nests. They were a noise, which was sometimes even not a noise, but merely a listening for a noise; they were a damp, chalky smell; they were the heaving, jerky, sticky manifestation of not-sleep. Once Henry had stood and watched Carleton in his crib, sleeping peacefully. He had not done what he wanted to do. He had not bent over and yelled in Carleton’s ear. Henry still hadn’t forgiven Carleton, not yet, not entirely, not for making him feel that way.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Jeremy Mars knows a lot about the planet Mars, although he's never been there. He knows some girls, and yet he doesn't know much about them. He wishes there were books about girls, the way there are books about Mars, that you could observe the orbits and brightness of girls through telescopes without appearing to be perverted.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“There are stories about winter ghosts found tangles like lice in their lovers' hair.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“How many witches are there in the world? Have you ever seen one? Would you know a witch if you saw one? And what would you do if you saw one? For that matter, do you know a cat when you see one? Are you sure?”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“The witch knew who had killed her and she snatched pieces of time, here and there, from the business of dying, to make her revenge.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“When Becka was a kid, she kept a suitcase under the bed. The suitcase was full of things that were to be rescued in case of an earthquake or a fire or murderers. The suitcase’s secondary function was using up some of the dangerous, dark space under the bed which might otherwise have been inhabited by monsters or dead people. Here be suitcases.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“So what do you think? Should the toothpaste and the condiments go next to the Elmer's glue and the hair gel and lubricants? Make a shelf of sticky things? Or should I put it with the chewing tobacco and the mouth-wash, and make a little display of things that you spit?”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Do you have a zombie contingency plan?”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“Yes, well.” The Devil says, “Things just get better and better nowadays.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed and given to evil habits, or else it can be a man in his late forties who works too much, or it can be an alarm clock.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Her voice is furry and sharp, like a blanket made of needles.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“If you were to say a witch's chess set instead of a witch's family, there would be some truth in that. Perhaps this is true of other families as well.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“(The children of the living and the dead most often take after their dead parents. Life, like red hair or blue eyes, is a recessive gene.)”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“That’s the weirdest story I’ve ever heard. Why is it that everything is so much sadder and funnier and so much more true when you’re drunk?”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“It’s funny, Soap thinks, how expensive stuff always looks more dangerous, and also safer, both of these things at the same time.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“You see, not everyone can give birth to their own house. Most people give birth to children instead. And when you have children, you need houses to put them in. So children and houses: most people give birth to the first and have to build the second.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“You should never burn down a house. You should never set a cat on fire. You should never watch and do nothing while a house is burning. You should never listen to a cat who says to do any of these things. You should listen to your mother when she tells you to come away from watching, to go to bed, to go to sleep. You should listen to your mother’s revenge.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Do you know how, sometimes, during a commercial break in your favorite television shows, your best friend calls and wants to talk about one of her boyfriends, and when you try to hang up, she starts crying and you try to cheer her up and end up missing about half of the episode? And so when you go to work the next day, you have to get the guy who sits next to you to explain what happened? That’s the good thing about a book. You can mark your place in a book. But this isn’t really a book. It’s a television show.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“But I thought I should go ahead and kiss you now. Just in case I don’t get to kiss you again.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Even nightmares have to sleep now and then.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners

“Q: Why must the cannon be fired? A: The cannon must be fired because that is the reason for cannons.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“She is called The Only Answer, because she only ever gives the same answer, no matter your question.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“Imaginary houses are sexy. Real ones are work.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“I know,” the Devil says. He whines. “But I still want it. I want things. That’s my job. I even want the things that I already have. I want everything you have. I want the things that don’t exist. That’s why I’m the Devil.”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories

“Once a guy had pulled a gun on him—there was no way to understand that, but, on the other hand, you knew exactly what was going on. With the zombies, who knew?”
― Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners: Stories