Turn, Magic Wheel Quotes

“Satire is people as they are; romanticism people as they would like to be; realism people as they seem with their insides left out.”
― Dawn Powell, Turn, Magic Wheel

“Tom was Mrs. Hickey’s, hers and no one else’s. White, thin-lipped, defiant little Mrs. Hickey waited for him outside the public school, stood outside beside the Special Bus when the first dismissal bell sounded, and a sudden high shrill shriek, many children’s voices blended into one cry of freedom, sounded louder and louder till the big doors burst open with it and all the little broken children stumbled out, on crutches, in braces, limping, fumbling, stuttering, the little Specials, their leaping cry at liberty as loud as the Regulars to be released ten minutes later. Mrs. Hickey, standing to one side of the gate so as not to embarrass Tom by betraying his need of her support, could single him out at once, swinging books along by a strap, twisted leg in silver brace dragging; she could see a bigger boy push him back and knock his head, laughing, against the wall, and she had to keep herself from rushing to his defense, she could see his lost blank smile, bewildered, uncomprehending, but she must not interfere, this was boy’s play, make a man of him, though so far as that went, he would never hit back, never, he was too gentle, and he only looked dazed at taunts. Not normal, the teacher had firmly told her, sub, she added briskly, and for the mother, facing clear-eyed skeptical educator, there was no use telling about the poem he wrote, a drawing he made, the toy airplane he built with his own weak little hands, but some of these days the teachers would be sorry, someday they would see how wrong they were.”
― Dawn Powell, Turn, Magic Wheel

“He walked over to the radio and dialed till a soprano flew out as if she had been imprisoned for years in this ugly form waiting for the magic touch of the prince. Released now, her song flooded the little room, set the two fat goldfish in the bowl on the mantel to waltzing furiously through their miniature cosmos; another soprano joined in, the two voices floated idly through the air, high silvery bubbles of light; l’amour, ah l’amour, they sang, l’amour, a balloon bounced lightly from high C to F, slid gracefully down to B. Now other feminine voices came winging to the aid of l’amour, balancing their delicate balls of sound on the end of magic wands—there—there—ah there … The goldfish, side by side, swam rhythmically round their coral castle, their tiny green undersea forest undulated ever so faintly, oh l’amour, l’amour.…”
― Dawn Powell, Turn, Magic Wheel

“A smile, tender and wishful, played about Marian’s fine bluish lips, it sang through her eyes and the hands so lovingly lingering over these mementoes, a little lullaby of a smile, an emanation from the small scraps themselves, for it fluttered across Effie’s lips also, delicate, fleeting, an odd little ghost of lost happiness, a butterfly blown about by death.”
― Dawn Powell, Turn, Magic Wheel