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Quotes / Magic Realism

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"It was as if God had decided to put to the test every capacity for surprise and was keeping the inhabitants of Macondo in a permanent alternation between excitement and disappointment, doubt and revelation, to such an extreme that no one knew for certain where the limits of reality lay. It was an intricate stew of truths and mirages that convulsed the ghost of José Arcadio Buendía with impatience and made him wander all through the house even in broad daylight."

"Look up "magical realism" in the dictionary, and it'll describe a literary style incorporating fantastic or mythical elements into otherwise realistic fiction. Colombia is where it began. And anyone who's spent real time here knows why. It's a place where the bizarre shakes hands with the inexplicable on a daily basis. But just like in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the weird shit usually pops off at certain critical moments. When the whole place is on edge. When everything's about to change."
Steve Murphy, Narcos

"Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism. "
Neil Gaiman

Where in a fairy tale, you just know it’s sort of a magical world where magical things can happen, this world treats it a little differently. I mean, there are magical things like the Blue Fairy that brings the puppet to life, but then how about the fact that there’s just a fox and a cat walking around like normal people? I remember how blown away they were that they saw a puppet boy walking around, and all I could think to myself is, “Why isn’t anybody blown away that there’s a giant fox and a giant cat just walking around?” Well, it’s just that kind of world where things like that can happen. And if there’s anything Disney is good at, it’s having us go along with things that don’t make sense, and this movie does it pretty well.

" The dominant literary mode of the twentieth century has been the fantastic. … By the end of the century, even authors deeply committed to the realist novel have often found themselves unable to resist the gravitational pull of the fantastic as a literary mode. "
Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century

I really love how Miyazaki's worlds are just so accepting of these fantastic supernatural elements. They just live in a world where witches are normal. "Okay, whatever. There's a witch flying around. Hi, how are you doing?" But at the same time, they still ask her questions and want to know things about her. It gives a very clear understanding of how they're accepted into this world.

Cartoons don't have to be 100% realistic.
Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

My name is Phoenix Wright. I'm a semi-decent lawyer,
With the help of magic stones and my hot/dead employer.
brentalfloss, "Phoenix Wright WITH LYRICS"

"Some of the game was based on real life: People carried magic swords, and many of the enemies were real, such as wolves or goblins or giant spiders. And like in real life, there was a gnome who sometimes appeared to give you quests or hints or items."
—"Save Me Plz" by David Barr Kirtley

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