“William Shakespeare, who liked magic and liberally employed ghosts and spirits as persuasively and meaningfully as you could wish, understood not only magic’s dazzling effects, but also–and this is what’s important–the power of its source in the human heart. We all wish for things with a passion that feels powerful enough to warp matter itself. We fear things we can neither see nor name. We want things we know logically we cannot have. And we are all haunted by demons and visited by grace. The power of magic, in fiction as in life, is its ability to draw us near the tempting and sometimes terrifying threshold of possibility.”
Carrie Brown, Creating Fiction (courtesy of Litwit)