became an instant hit and inspired the 1998 movie of the same name. In this delightful romantic comedy, the sisters Gillian and Sally Owens grow up and fall in love. Sally suffers as a result of the family curse in which any man an Owens woman loves dies an early death.
Gilly falls in love with a man who abuses her, and the adult sisters come together to get rid of him for good. That is harder than it seems, though, and takes two murders and a community-wide exorcism to finally end his abusive ways. The movie is both funny and sweet, and it is now known as a cult classic romantic comedy in the finest form.
Practical Magic Quotes
Here are 50 of the greatest quotes about life and love from Practical Magic: 35 quotes from the novel and 15 of the most iconic quotes from the popular movie.
From the 1995 Novel:
- “People want to ignore what they can’t understand. They’re looking for logic at any cost.”
- “Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.”
- “Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet. Wear dark glasses; bathe with lavender oil and cool fresh water. Seek shelter from the sun at noon.”
- “I never even believed in happiness. I didn’t think it existed. Now look at me. I’m ready to believe in just about anything.”
- “If there’s one thing Sally is now certain of, it’s how you can amaze yourself by the things you’re willing to do. Those are her daughters, the girls she wanted to lead normal lives, and she’s allowing them to stand over a pile of bones with a spaghetti pot filled mostly with lye. What has happened to her?”
- “Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words so cruel that each syllable will take on the form of a snake, although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat its own tail once the words are said aloud.”
- “You can never tell about a person by guessing…that’s why language was invented. Otherwise, we’d all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”
- “For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street.”
- “Goodness, in their opinion, was not a virtue but merely spinelessness and fear disguised as humility.”
- ″‘Everything I do is wrong. You think I don’t know that? I’ve screwed up my entire existence, and everyone who’s close to me gets screwed right along with me.‘”
- “In the dark morning light, her gray eyes look completely green, as though they belonged to a cat that can see in the dark.”
- “Lightning, like love, is never ruled by logic.”
- “Night and Day, they called them, and although neither girl laughed at this little joke or found it amusing in the least, they recognized the truth in it, and were able to understand, earlier than most sisters, that the moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.”
- “His grandfather told him once that witches caught you in this way- they knew how much most men love themselves and how deeply they’ll let themselves be drawn in, just for a glimpse of their own image. If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run… But of course, Gary has no intention of doing anything like that. He intends to go on drowning for a very long time.”
- “Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.”
- “The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven.”
- “Owens women ignored convention; they were headstrong and willful, and meant to be that way.”
- “A decade or two on the rocks gives a person character. Although she’d never believe it, those lines in Gillian’s face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she’s gone through and what she’s survived and who exactly she is, deep inside.”
- “The aunts are so old it’s impossible to tell their age. Their hair is white and their spines are crooked. They wear long black skirts and laced leather boots. Though they haven’t left Massachusetts in more than forty years, they’re certainly not intimidated by travel. Or anything else, for that matter. They know what they want and they’re not afraid to be outspoken.”
- “Now whenever he kissed her, she cried and wished she had never fallen in love in the first place. It had made her too helpless, because that’s what love did.”
- “She doesn’t brush her hair a thousand times at night, or pluck her eyebrows, or bathe with sesame oil so her skin will stay smooth. In a world without love, what is the point of any of that?”
- “But love was not about practice and preparation, it was pure chance; if you took your time with it you ran the risk of having it evaporate before it had even begun.”
- “For her whole life she has been measuring herself against her sister, and she’s not going to do that anymore. That is the gift Gillian has given her tonight, and for that she will always be grateful.”
- “On evenings when the orange moon was rising in the sky, and some woman was crying in their kitchen, Sally and Gillian would lock pinkies and vow never to be ruled by their passions.”
- “He kept thinking about the life span of a mayfly, and all the time he had wasted, and frankly he wasn’t willing to waste any more.”
- “He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her, too, so that her heart began to race and she’d start to think forgiveness with every breath. It’s amazing the places that love will carry you. It’s astounding to discover just how far you’re willing to go.”
- “There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.”
- “Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that’s what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.”
- “This insect, which marks off time, clicking like a clock, issues the sound no one ever wants to hear beside her beloved. A man’s tenure on earth is limited enough, but once the beetle’s ticking begins there’s no way to stop it; there’s no plug to pull, no pendulum to stop, no switch that will restore the time you once thought you had.”
- “I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.”
- “Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.”
- “Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene.”
- “The lonelier you are, the more you pull away, until humans seem an alien race, with customs and a language you can’t begin to understand.”
- “He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything too badly.”
- “She preferred cats to human beings and turned down every offer from the men who fell in love with her.”
Eat Pray Love – the Most Inspiring Quotes from the Book and Movie
From the 1998 Cult Classic Movie. (Get the DVD here)
- Gillian Owens: “Of course you’re going to see me again. We’ll grow old together. It’s going to be you and me living in a big house… these two old biddies with all these cats. I bet we even die on the same day.”
- Aunt Frances: She heard the beetle ticking for your father’s death all day long. She knew that when you hear the sound of the deathwatch beetle the man you love is doomed to die.
- Kylie: Mom, I’m worried about Antonia. Did you know that she put on her mouse ears and drives around town, all liquored up, NAKED?
- Sally Owens: “We have to go to the police. It was self-defense.” Gilly Owens: “What, the old slowly-poisoning-him-to-death self-defense?”
- Aunt Jet: “You see that couple here? Well, he’s having an affair with the babysitter and she can eat a pound cake in under a minute.”
- Gary Hallet: “Did you or your sister kill James Angelov?” Sally Owens: “Yeah, a couple of times.”
- Gillian Owens: “Do you forgive our mother?” Sally Owens: “Sometimes.” Gillian Owens: “Well, you’ll never forgive yourself, unless you get up, get dressed and you brush your *** teeth, ’cause your breath stinks.”
- Gary Hallet: “Where is James Angelov?” Sally Owens: “I think he’s in the spirit world.” Gary Hallet: “You think he’s dead?” Sally Owens: “No, I think he’s haunting us.”
- Gillian Owens: “He wants me, just me. Everyone would be safe. Just let him take me.” Sally Owens: “Don’t die on me, Gilly please, ’cause we’re supposed to die together, at the same time. You promised me that, and this is not that day.”
- Sally Owens: “Sometimes I feel like there’s a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean.”
- Gary Hallet: “Some people also use it as a poison.” Sally Owens: “Which people?” Gary Hallet: “Witch people.”
- Gary Hallet: “Strange town. Never spent this much on shampoo before, in my life.”
- Sally – Age 11: “I hope I never fall in love, I hope I never fall in love, I hope I never fall in love.” Gillian – Age 10: “I can’t wait to fall in love.”
- Sally Owens: “What would you do, Gilly?” Gillian Owens: “What wouldn’t I do… for the right guy?”
- Gillian Owens: “It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you’re not careful, if you don’t keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can’t see what’s happening to the people around you. You can’t see that you’re about to fall.”
Audrey Hepburn’s Most Stunning Quotes
Practical Magic Video – Trailer
Here is the original movie trailer. Its definitely a fun watch and captures the essence of the movie.
The Funniest Quotes from My Cousin Vinny
Summary of Practical Magic
These 50 quotes range from funny to sad and thoughtful, all of them made iconic by American author Alice Hoffman.
Enjoy these quotes as you think about the absurdities of life and love. We can all use a bit of fun now and then.
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
