“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.”
“You really didn’t see the sadness or the longing unless you already knew it was there. But that was the trick, wasn’t it? Everyone had their disappointment and their baggage; only, some people carried it in their inside pockets and not on their backs.”
“The trick to happiness wasn’t in freezing every momentary pleasure and clinging to each one, but in ensuring one’s life would produce many future moments to anticipate.”
“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?”
“O, death’s a great disguiser, and you
may add to it. Shave the head, and tie the beard, and
say it was the desire of the penitent to be so bared
before his death. You know the course is common.”
“I don’t like this trick, sir. My tongue isn’t quick quick or slick, sir. I get all those ticks and clocks, sir, mixed up with chicks and tocks, sir. I can’t do it, Mr. Fox, sir. ”
“He was tired when he got back, but Elizabeth shouted, ‘Fantastic, do it again!’ So the dragon jumped up and flew around the whole world in just twenty seconds. ”
“Don’t you talk to that cat. That cat is a bad one, That Cat in the Hat. He plays lots of bad tricks. Don’t you let him come near. You know what he did the last time he was here. ”
“Cat! You get out! There is work to be done. I have no time for tricks. I must go back and dig. I can’t have you here eating cake like a pig! You get out of this house! We don’t want you about!”
“I got word of a bird that does something that’s almost unheard of! It’s hard to believe but this bird called the Pelf lays eggs that are three times as big as herself! How that Pelf ever learned such a difficult trick I never found out. But I found that egg quick. And I managed to get it down out of the nest and home to the kitchen along with the rest.”
″‘Po Po, Po Po, I have a plan. At the door there is a big basket. Behind it is a rope. Tie the rope to the basket, sit in the basket and throw the other end to me. I can pull you up.‘”
“They had blown on the signpost and set it spinning so that when it stopped it pointed in wrong directions. They had sent their servants to trick him into a false sense of safety. The trick had failed.”
“The Enormous Crocodile found a large piece of wood and placed it in the middle of the playground. Then he lay across the piece of wood and tucked in his feet so that he looked almost exactly like a seesaw.”
“He picked a lovely bunch of flowers and arranged it on one of the tables. From the same table, he took away one of the benches and hid it in the bushes. Then he put himself in the place where the bench had been. ”
“When no one was looking, he crept up onto the merry-go-round and put himself between a wooden lion and a fearsome dragon. He sat up a bit on his back legs and he kept very still. He looked exactly like a wooden crocodile on the merry-go-round. ”
“At some point we must stop:
1. Replaying what happened over and over.
2. Taking what was actually terrible in the past and tricking ourselves into thinking it was better than it was.
3. Imagining the ways things should be so much that we can’t acknowledge what is.”
″‘Proud? Proud indeed!’ I recoiled from the venom of her attack. ‘It is a trick! This thing beauty they talk about. Believe me, it is a low trick put out by God self.’ Her face was flushed with anger. ‘He puts meaning into beauty, and reduces the meaning to nothing.‘”
“Thomas was a cheeky little engine, too. He thought no engine worked as hard as he did. So he used to play tricks on them. He liked best of all to come quietly beside a big engine dozing on the siding and make him jump.”
“I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal, having had a violent experience at the age of nine. I will make this clear at once because I have noticed that if things seep out slowly through a book the reader is apt to feel let down or tricked in some way when he eventually gets the point.”
“Now, freight cars are silly and noisy. They talk a lot and don’t attend to what they are doing. They don’t listen to their engine, and when he stops, they bump into each other, screaming, ‘Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Whatever is happening?’ And, I’m sorry to say, they play tricks on an engine who is not used to them.”
“A boy was the accident of a moment, something as light and brief as a sun-glint on water- but a good trick was something to chuckle over for a hundred years.”
“Every morning the birds sing, and the Owl flies back to his dark hole. When the birds see him, they mob him, remembering his trick. He dare only come out at night, to scrape a bare living on rats, mice and beetles.”
“Never again did he tease any little cat. He saved his rough tricks for the cats as big as he was. As for the little cats, he tried not to tease them but to please them. This was the beginning of his education.”
″‘Give me the herbs for the omelette. Be sharp!’ He was rather abrupt. Jemima Puddle-duck had never heard him speak like that. She felt surprised, and uncomfortable.”
“A trick that
everyone abhors
In Little Girls is
slamming Doors
A Wealthy Banker’s Little Daughter
Who lived in Palace Green,
Bayswater (By name Rebecca Offendort)
Was given to this Furious Sport.”
“Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life, and what tricks it can play!”