My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

I love my family and I had a very wonderful magical childhood. But New Jersey was actually a very cold place. There was such an intense concentration of wealth and such a low concentration of any actual human happiness.

It was as if all of the happiness all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring bittersweet tones and flowed away becoming temporal and transitory once more.

Every great man every successful man no matter what the field of endeavor has known the magic that lies in these words: every adversity has the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit.

There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder.

If you can see the magic in a fairytale you can face the future.

If you see the magic in a fairy tale you can face the future.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Often the magical elements in my books are standing in for elements of the real world the small and magical-in-their-own-right sorts of things that we take for granted and no longer pay attention to like the bonds of friendship that entwine our own lives with those of other people and places.

The magic of America is that we're a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.

It's easy for Americans to forget that the food they eat doesn't magically appear on a supermarket shelf.

I don't want to lose my fitness. I'm 45. I have two babies. I've got a long way to go and I want to keep in tiptop shape. There's no magic bullet.

If you have stage fright it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

I always thought it was strange when these artists like Kurt Cobain or whoever would get really famous and say 'I don't understand why this is happening to me.' There is a mathematical formula to why you got famous. It isn't some magical thing that just started happening.

If you look closely there is no book more visual than Three Trapped Tigers in that it is filled with blank pages dark pages it has stars made of words the famous magical cube made of numbers and there is even a page which is a mirror.

Magicians lose the opportunity to experience a sense of wonder.

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting commando training theatre and magic.