“Now you’re looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
“Volunteers from the audience sometimes participate in preparation. As the trick is being setup, the magician will make use of every possible use of misdirection.”
“The third stage is sometimes called the effect, or the prestige, and this is the product of magic. If a rabbit is pulled from a hat, the rabbit, which apparently did not exist before the trick was performed, can be said to be the prestige of that trick.”
“The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret... but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know.”
“He came in to demand an answer and I told him the truth. That I have fought with myself over that night, one half of me swearing blind that I tied a simple slipknot, the other half convinced that I tied the Langford double. I can never know for sure.”
“You never understood, why we did this. The audience knows the truth: the world is simple. It’s miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you... then you got to see something really special... you really don’t know?... it was... it was the look on their faces..”.
“Won’t look like rain. Won’t look like snow. Won’t look like fog. That’s all we know. We just can’t tell you any more. We’ve never made oobleck before.”
“Haroun went with this father whenever he could, because the man was a magician, it couldn’t be denied. He would climb up on to some little makeshift stage in a dead-end alley packed with raggedy children and toothless old-timers, all squatting in the dust;...”
“at the foot of those steps you will find an open door leading into three large halls. Tuck up your gown and go through them without touching anything, or you will die instantly. These halls lead into a garden of fine fruit trees. Walk on until you come to a niche in a terrace where stands a lighted lamp. Pour out the oil it contains and bring it to me.”
The trilogy covers from his ninth to his thirteenth birthday and a variety of adventures all of whom require him to employ his wits and to embrace the magician within.
Mr Majika turns up to Class Three at the beginning of term and all is well at first. However this begins to change when Hamish Bigmore returns to his old tricks of generally being an unpleasant pupil, who refuse’s to listen to the teachers.