The Magician's Elephant Quotes

“It is important that you say what you mean to say. Time is too short. You must speak the words that matter.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“It is a bad thing to have love and nowhere to put it.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Magic is always impossible.... It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it's magic.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“How will the world change if we do not question it?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“There," she said. She rocked him back and forth. "There, you foolish, beautiful boy who wants to change the world. There, there. And who could keep from loving you? Who could keep from loving a boy so brave and true?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Have you, in truth, ever seen something so heartbreakingly lovely? What are we to make of a world where stars shine bright in the midst of so much darkness and gloom?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“What was it like... to have someone who knew you would always return and who welcomed you with open arms?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Longing is not always a reciprocal thing.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“There is a lot of love in him, a lot of love in his heart... And he is up there with no one and nothing to love. It is a bad thing to have love and no where to put it.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“The undoing is almost always more difficult than the doing.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“[He] had the soul of a poet, and because of this, he liked very much to consider questions that had no answers.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“All of God's creatures have names, every last one of them. Of that I am sure: of that I have no doubt at all.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that somewhere in another place entirely she was known and loved.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Things are not at all what they seem to be: oh no, not at all.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Don't drop him," said Peter's mother to his father. "Don't you dare drop him." She was laughing.

"I will not," said his father. "I could not." For he is Peter Augustus Duchene, and he will always return to me.

Again and again, Peter's father threw him up in the air. Again and again, Peter felt himself suspended in nothingness for a moment, just a moment, and then he was pulled back, returned to the sweetness of the earth and the warmth of his father's waiting arms.

"See?" said his father to his mother. "Do you see how he always comes back to me?”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?"

"The world cannot be changed," said Gloria. "The world is what the world is and has forever been."

"No," said Leo Matienne softly, "I will not believe that. For here is Peter standing before us, asking us to make it something different.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“But that is impossible," said Peter.
"Magic is always impossible," said the magician. "It begins with the impossible and ends with the impossible and is impossible in between. That is why it is magic.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Truly, I did not intend to harm you, he said. That was never my intention.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“What is?', he said. 'What if?' is a question that belongs to magic.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“She was terribly pleased, because she had always, secretly, deep within her heart, believed that she could fly. And now here she was, doing what she had long suspected she could do, and she could not deny that it was gratifying in the extreme.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Perhaps this is a dream, said Madam La Vaughn from her chair. Perhaps the whole thing has been nothing but a dream.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“I intended only lilies. That was my intention: a bouquet of lilies. - The Magician”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“If the world held magic powerful enough to make the elephant appear, then there must exist, too, magic in equal measure, magic powerful enough to undo what had been done. ”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“And that, after all, is how it ended.

Quietly.

In a world muffled by the gentle, forgiving hand of snow.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“Gloria put a bowl of stew in Peter's hands. "Eat," she said.

Peter raised the spoon to his lips. He chewed. He swallowed.

It had been a long time since he had eaten anything besides tiny fish and old bread.

And so when Peter had his first bite of stew, it overwhelmed him. The warmth of it, the richness of it, knocked him backward; it was as if a gentle hand had pushed him when he was not expecting it. Everything he had lost came flooding back: the garden, his father, his mother, his sister, the promises that he had made and could not keep.

"What's this?" said Gloria Matienne. "The boy is crying."

"Shhh," said Leo. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder. "Shhh. Don't worry, Peter. Everything will be good. All will be well. We will do together whatever it is that needs to be done. But for now, you must eat."

Peter nodded. He raised his spoon. Again he chewed and swallowed, and again he was overcome. He could not help it. He could not stop the tears; they flowed down his cheeks and into the bowl. "It is a very good stew, Madam Matienne. he managed to say. "Truly, it is an excellent stew.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“I intended lilies, said the magician. but in the clutches of a desparate desire to do something extraordinary, I called down a greater magic and inadvertently caused you a profound harm. I will now try to undo what I have done.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant

“The longer he marched, the more convinced Peter became that things were indeed hopeless and that an elephant was a ridiculous answer to any question- but a particularly ridiculous answer to a question posed by the human heart.”
― Kate DiCamillo, The Magician's Elephant