The Magic Toyshop Quotes

“I think I want to be in love with you but I don't know how.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“She stood lost in eternity... watching the immense sky...”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Then she broke down and cried onto the flowery wrapping paper. Melanie put her arms around the poor, thin body. What is Aunt Margaret made of? Birdbones and tissue paper. spun glass and straw.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Moonlight, white satin, roses. A bride.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“October, crisp, misty, golden October, when the light is sweet and heavy.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“She said to the Daisy girl with her big brown eyes: 'I will not have it plain. No. Fancy. It must be fancy!' She meant her future. A moon-daisy dropped to the floor, down from her hair, like a faintly derisive sign from heaven.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“What is Aunt Margaret made of? Bird bones and tissue paper, spun glass and straw.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Everything went black in the shocking folds of his embrace. She was very startled and near to sobbing.
'Caw, caw,' echoed his raincoat.
'Don't be frightened,' he said. 'It is only poor Finn, who will do you no harm.'
She recovered herself a little, though she was still trembling. She could see her own face reflected in little in the black pupils of his subaqueous eyes. She still looked the same. She saluted herself. He was only a little taller than she and their eyes were almost level. Remotely, she wished him three inches taller. Or four. She felt the warm breath from his wild beast's mouth softly, against her cheek. She did not move. Stiff, wooden, and unresponsive, she stood in his arms and watched herself in his eyes. It was a comfort to see herself as she thought she looked.
'Oh, get it over with, get it over with,' she urged furiously under her breath.
He was grinning like Pan in a wood. He kissed her, closing his eyes so that she could not see herself any more. His lips were wet and rough, cracked. It might have been anybody, kissing her, and besides, she did not know him well, if at all. She wondered why he was doing this, putting his mouth on her own undesiring one, softly moving his body against her. What was the need? She felt a long way away from him, and superior, also.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“She was too young, too soft and new, to come to terms with these wild beings whose minds veered at crazy angles from the short, straight, smooth lines of her own experience.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“It was the fault of the wedding-dress night, when she married the shadows and the world ended.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Finn is Daddy,' said Victoria with fat satisfaction.
'Not yet,' said Finn. 'But we'll christen the first one Proximity.'
Melanie choked on a mouthful.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“But needs must when the devil drives.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“I understand,' said Melanie. An ancient, female look passed between them; they were poor women pensioners, planets round a male sun.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“His tobacco had a richly herbal smell, as though it was good for you.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Watching a film was like being a voyeur, living vicariously.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“...she found it made things easier if she dramatised them. Or melodramatised them. It was easier, for example, to face the fact of Uncle Philip if she saw him as a character in a film, possibly played by Orson Welles.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Her carved eyeballs stared back at them with the uncanny blindness of statues, who seem always to be perceiving another dimension, where everything is statues.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“It was a sensitive and musical dog.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“They were dirty and common. She hated to use the word "common", only common people called other people "common"; her mother taught her that.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“And this was how the red people passed their time and amused themselves when they thought nobody was watching.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“NU S-AR FI AȘTEPTAT CA SUFLETUL LUI SĂ CUNOASCĂ ASTFEL DE TRĂIRI.
[…]
MELANIE SE SIMȚEA UȘOR VINOVATĂ CĂ NU-I PUTEA ÎMPĂRTĂȘI SENTIMENTELE CU ACEEAȘI INTENSITATE.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop

“Y comprendió que muchas cosas que había dado por sentadas, muchas cosas que creía sencillas y domésticas, eran en realidad verdaderos lujos.”
― Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop