The Magician Quotes

“Switzerland, to Thomas, survived on a myth of high Protestant morality even though it kept money safe for scoundrels. Just as its banks were open to the opulent, its borders were usually closed to those in need.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“He wanted to tell Golo, who was now thirty-two, that Elisabeth had declared that after the age of thirty no one had the right to blame their parents for anything. And then he could turn to Michael, who was twenty-two, and tell him that he had eight years left and he should use them wisely.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“He wanted that which had been so fleeting to become solid. The only way he knew to make this happen was to write it down. Should he have let it pass so that it would have faded completely, this, the story of his life?”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“On a few occasions in his own books, Thomas [Mann] thought, he had risen above the ordinary world from which the work emerged. The death of Hanno in -Buddenbrooks-, for example, or the quality of the desire described in -Death in Venice-, or the séance scenes in -The Magic Mountain.- Maybe in other parts of other books too. But he did not think so.He had let dry humor and social settings dominate his writing; he was afraid of what might take over if he did not exercise caution and control.

He could imagine decency, but that was hardly a virtue in a time that had grown sinister. He could imagine humanism, but that made no difference in a time that exalted the will of the crowd. He could imagine a frail intelligence, but that meant little in a time that honored brute strength. As the slow movement [of Beethoven's String Quartet, op. 132] came gravely to an end, he realized that, if he could summon the courage, he would have to entertain evil in a book, he would have to open the door to what was darkly outside his own comprehension.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“If he were to be offered a chance to say a final word about the human spirit, he would like to do so comically, he thought; he would dramatize the idea that humans could not ever be trusted, that they could reverse their own story as the wind changed, that their lives were a continuous, enervating and amusing effort to appear plausible. And in that lay, he felt, the pure genius of humanity, and all the pathos.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“There are not two Germanies, a bad one and a good one, but only one, in which the best qualities have been corrupted with diabolical cunning into evil. The evil Germany is the good one in misfortune and guilt, the good Germany perverted and overthrown.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“...it is a grubby business writing novels. Composers can think about God and the ineffable. We have to imagine the buttons on a coat.

[Thomas Mann, to Alma Mahler Werfel]”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“There were days when he thought of a book and could see where it might be found in his study. Not being able to take it down and open it came to him with sadness but also, at times, with panic.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“She calls once a day and I take her call once a week,” Mrs. Roosevelt replied.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“As Thomas walked away from his two sons, he knew that if he looked back he would see them both staring after him coldly. He wanted to tell Golo, who was now thirty-two, that Elisabeth had declared that after the age of thirty no one had the right to blame their parents for anything. And then he could turn to Michael, who was twenty-two, and tell him that he had eight years left and he should use them wisely.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“And Germany had become powerful not only in its military might and its industry but in its deepening sense of its own soul, the intensity of its sombre self-interrogation. He listened to the aria conclude and saw that no one outside Germany would ever understand what it meant to be in this room now and what strength and solace this music gave to those under its spell.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“As he sat at the table, the silence was interrupted only by the sharp chirping of the birds. It occurred to Thomas that this would be a good moment to be found slumped over. He smiled when it struck him that, in his best suit and tie and his newest shoes, he was perfectly dressed for this , and would look distinguished if he had to be taken away by stretcher.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“The Nazis, he realized, were not like the poets of the Munich Revolution. They were street fighters who had taken power without losing their sway over the streets. They managed to be both government and opposition. They thrived on the idea of enemies, including enemies within. They did not fear bad publicity—rather, they actually wanted the worst of their actions to become widely known, all the better to make everyone, even those loyal to them, afraid.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“Yes, it is a grubby business writing novels. Composers can think about God and the ineffable. We have to imagine the buttons on a coat.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“The Nazis, he realized, were not like the poets of the Munich Revolution. They were street fighters who had taken power without losing their sway over the streets. They managed to be both government and opposition. They thrived on the idea of enemies, including enemies within. They did not fear bad publicity—rather, they actually wanted the worst of their actions to become widely known, all the better to make everyone, even those loyal to them, afraid.”
― Toibin Colm, The Magician

“Eternity will be bourgeois.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“desultory-looking young man in threadbare livery. What fascinated Thomas was the sheer dullness”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“He presumed that they would deplore, as he did, the turning away from the principles that made a civilized society, which were, as he named them, ‘liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in progress’.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“He [Thomas Mann] remembered this Beethoven quartet [his op. 132] as being sad, sometimes mournful. What was surprising now was that, while the undertone was melancholy, the way the instruments stopped and started and then moved into melody made it uplifting. The suffering in the music was buried in every note, but so too was something almost stronger, some sense of an unyielding beauty that after a few minutes rose, as though surprised at its own vigor, into a sound that made him stop thinking, stop trying to find meaning in this, and simply listen, let his spirit absorb what was being played.
...To move from the bombast of the symphonies to the unearthly loneliness of this quartet, , he though, must have been a journey that even Beethoven himself could not easily comprehend. It must have come as though some strange, tentative, shivering knowledge emerged suddenly into clarity.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“In the future, he thought, perhaps when this war was over, women like Agnes would have more power. Erika, it occurred to him, would be a good companion for her as they set about some noble task. He smiled at the idea of Agnes and his daughter in each other’s orbit. Together they could run the world.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“he would never understand their abstruse references,”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“understanding is perhaps the most important thing in life.”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician

“He thanked his father-in-law profusely, pleased at the thought that Alfred did not detect his determination not to be beholden to the Pringsheims ever again,”
― Colm Tóibín, The Magician