Do we need a good reason to look at these bunnies peeking out of a magician's top hat? They are from Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. (Screen grab courtesy of DVDBeaver.)

We'll Change the Word to Sparkle

"You didn't use the magic word."
"Ben, please."
“That isn't the magic word. It's twink—”
“Don't say that.”
“Okay. We'll change the word to sparkle. Do you like that better?”
—Karen Toller Whittenburg, The Fifty-Cent Groom (2011)

Read, Aim, Fire

A line taken out of context, from our dictionary of magic words:

“‘Ready, aim, fire’ is [a] mantra.” —Howard Kaminsky and Alexandra Penney, Magic Words at Work (2004)

22 (and counting) Definitions of Magic

Here are twenty-two (and counting) thought-provoking definitions of magic, curated by The Conjurer:

http://magicandconjuring.blogspot.com/search?q=%22what+is+magic%3F%22

Whether It Went Well or Not ...

Whether it went well or not, say the magic word.
—Binami Eva-Uku, The Power of Mistake (2011)

Xeper

The ancient Egyptian word transcribed as xeper, pronounced khefer, means "to come into being." "To know this word is to know that the ultimate responsibility for the evolution of your psyche is in your hands. It is the Word of freedom, ecstasy, fearful responsibility, and the root of all magic" (Don Webb, quoted in Stealing Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Modern Western Magic by Nevill Drury, 2011).

Once an Open Sesame

A line taken out of context, from our dictionary of magic words:

“[S]eal (and otter) skins, once an open sesame to the teas and silks of China . . .” —Roy Nickerson, Sea Otters (1998)