Happy Halloween, everyone! It has long been my practice to watch the 1998 film version of Practical Magic. If I am going to reread any of the books, I also tend to do so in October. It just makes sense! 

This time, I thought I would make a post of my personal favorite lines from all four of the Practical Magic book series. I think they are either touching, make me think, are funny, or are wise. 

What lines would you add?

Practical Magic

• Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.
• The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.
• Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you’ve had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.
• There’s a little witch in all of us.
• If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.
• His grandfather used to say that holding tears back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you’re left with a stub of a neck and nothing more. … Crying in a woman’s kitchen doesn’t embarrass him; he’s seen his grandfather’s eyes fill with tears nearly every time he looked at a beautiful horse or a woman with dark hair.
• Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies, for instance, and women who’ve been in love with the wrong man too often.
• 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.
• At twilight they will always think of those women who would do anything for love. And in spite of everything, they will discover that this, above all others, is their favorite time of day. It’s the hour when they remember everything the aunts taught them. It’s the hour they’re most grateful for.
• Always throw spoiled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plants roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.

Magic Lessons:

• This was true magic, the making and unmaking of the world with paper and ink. 
• But it was a woman’s personal book that was most important; here she would record the correct recipes for all manner of enchantments. … literary magic, the writing of charms and amulets and incantations, for there read no magic as covered or as effective as that which used words.
• Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.
• What is a daughter but good fortune, as complicated as she might be.
• There are no spells for many of the sorrows in this world, and death is one of them.
• A woman alone who could read and write was suspect. Words were magic. Books were not to be trusted. What men could not understand, they wished to burn.
• “Never be without thread,” she told the girl. “What is broken can also be mended.”
• Tell a witch to go, and she’ll plant her feet on the ground and stay exactly where she is. 
• Tell a witch to bind a wild creature and she will do the opposite.
• What was a witch if not a woman with wisdom and talent?
• If they called her beautiful, it was a mark against them, for what a person was could not be seen with the naked eye.
• These are the lessons to be learned. Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer. 

The Rules of Magic:

• “Anything whole can be broken,” Isabelle told her. “And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak.” 
• “Do you have business at the cemetery, Miss Owens?” the driver asked in a nervous tone.  
  • “We all will have business there sooner or later,” she answered brightly.
• Three hundred years ago people believed in the devil. They believed if an incident could not be explained, then the cause was said to be a witch. Women who did as they pleased, women with property, women who had enemies, women who took lovers, women who knew about the mysteries of childbirth, all were suspect…
• …witches were difficult to control, for they had minds of their own and didn’t hold to keeping to the law.
• The world will do enough to us, we don’t have to do it to ourselves.
• She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew…that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.
• …when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.
• I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That’s the secret, you know. That’s the way you change your fate.
• …he kissed her and told her he didn’t care if they were witches or warlocks or zombies or Republicans.
• “But trying is a start. What is your story?”
  • “My life.”
  • “Ah.”
  • “If you write it all down, it doesn’t hurt as much.”
• But rules were never the point. It was finding out who you were.
• Always leave out seed for the birds when the first snow falls. Wash your hair with rosemary. Drink lavender tea when you cannot sleep. Know that the only remedy for love is to love more.

The Book of Magic:

• Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.
• But stories change, depending on who tells them, and stories are nothing if you don’t have someone to tell them to.
• “If you can’t eat chocolate cake for breakfast, what’s the point of being alive?” Franny said.
• There are some things you have only once in a lifetime, and then only if you’re lucky.
• When Kylie and Antonia were growing up, their mother had told them if they were ever lost it was always best to find their way to a library.
• “There are no witches,” Antonia said. “Only people who want to burn them.”
• “Do you think I’m a fool”
  • “No, I think you’re a witch.”
  • “Then you’re not so stupid after all.”
• “If it isn’t written down, it will likely be forgotten,” Isabelle had told her. That was why women had been illiterate for so long; reading and writing gave power, and power was what had been so often denied to women.
• A woman with knowledge, one who could read and write, and who spoke her own mind had always been considered dangerous.
• If a woman doesn’t write her own history, there are very few who will.
• It never hurt to have some assistance from a sister, and this was a simple spell that had been used by women since the beginning of time, with words that resembled the wild clacking of birds when they were spoken aloud.
• What a life she had, most of it unexpected. She would not have it any other way, not even the losses. This life was hers and hers alone.
• Her love was the fiercest part about her. 
• The Book of the Raven was meant to go to the next woman who needed it. It might sit on the shelf for another three hundred years or it might be discovered the very next day, either way it would continue to live, for people often find the books they need.
• Once, a long time ago, before we knew who we were, we thought we wanted to be like everyone else. How lucky to be exactly who we were. 
• Women here in Massachusetts had been drowned and beaten and hanged, especially if they were found to have access to books other than the Bible…

Fans of this book series also know that there are many references made in them to the Owens’ women’s black soap, Chocolate Tipsy Cake, and a variety of teas. These are the ones I found, along with a couple possible recipes. I use Adagio Tea for a lot of my tea-making supplies. I will do the same when I make these tea blends. If I can’t find an item on Adagio, I’m sure a local farmer’s market or bulk foods store will have the rest. 

Teas and Other Foodstuffs:

• Courage Tea: currants, vanilla, green tea, thyme. Steep it for a long time.
• Fever Tea: cinnamon, bayberry, ginger, thyme, marjoram
• Frustration Tea: chamomile, hyssop, raspberry leaf, rosemary
• Clairvoyant Tea: mugwort, thyme, yarrow, rosemary
• Travel Well Tea: orange peel, black tea, mint, rosemary
• Chocolate Tipsy Cake. I found this recipe on The Hungry Bookworm and it seems the most accurate and tipsy-making cake of the sort, so I am going to refer to it when I make my own: Chocolate Tipsy Cake by The Hungry Bookworm. 
• Practical Magic Black Soap. Similarly, I found a recipe for the Owens Women’s Black Soap on Under a Tin Roof. This sounds lovely, though there are a few changes I will make to my own batches, different oils, loads more lavender since it is supposed to be lavender scented, but overall I think this one is the most legit recipe I’ve found for the black soap yet! To do it further justice, according to Aunt Isabelle, “The best soap is made in March in the dark of the moon.”