“Raffy has this magical, abracadabrical ability to transform all his "ifs" into "whens".”

“We stare at each other pop-eyed over the burlap sack and laugh as if we're afraid to stop. Somebody needs to say the magical, abracadabrical words that will turn tonight's crime into a joke. Marta has buttoned her wet sweater up to her neck. Petey's vanished. Now Raffy swirls the flashlights with true panic. Our joke keeps hatching and waddling forward in a snaky black procession, growing longer and less funny by the second, and this time nobody, not even Raffy, knows the punch line.”

“In addition to all the other kinds of magic there is Yes Magic and No Magic, and Mallow is wonderful fierce at No Magic. Sometimes that is the last magic you can hold on to, when all the rest has gone.”

“E-mail has some magical ability to turn off the politeness gene in a human being.”

“The soil needs the seed and the seed needs the soil. The one only has meaning with the other. It is the same thing with human beings. When male knowledge joins with female transformation, then the great magical union is created, and its name is wisdom. Wisdom means both to know and to transform.”

“Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.”