Katy Grabel > Quotes

“I was to learn that light didn’t really belong to me. In my father’s show I would be the lone dim figure holding a tray or a coin bucket in the dregs of his spotlight, but jumping out of that big gold top hat would always be mine. In many cold and cavernous theaters in strange towns, I would come to crave jumping out of that hat for that one moment when no one looked at my father—they looked at me.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir

“Opening his mouth for all to see, he picked up the burning cigarette with his tongue. I held my breath.
It perched on the tip, a surfer on a wave, in perfect balance. Then he drew in his tongue and closed his mouth around it. From his lips he blew another waft of smoke, as if he had conceived smoke from
a flame deep within. He continued dancing the cigarette around his tongue, closing his mouth on it and blowing smoke. The air smoldered. No one said a word. I felt ash and heat in my mouth, smoke in my mouth.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir

“As soon as the show was over, we packed up the truck, moved to the next town, slept, unpacked at a new theater, and performed that night. Then the whole cycle started again. This is why a road man
longs for a steady booking. He wants a dressing room where he can hang his clothes and keep tins of stage makeup on his vanity. He wants his magic cronies stopping by his little apartment near the theater to play poker after the show, to sleep in till dusk, and sip a bowl of soup before showtime. A road man can never have that. Time and motion commands his being, blood, and bones. By the time he drives out of town his audiences will be home in bed. He lives on in dim, frosty memory and the dreamscape of strangers.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir

“The magic show was the vessel for everyone’s deepest desires, and we passed through as believers or not.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir

“The magician is an obvious target of suspicion. The very nature of his profession triggers defenses. He
claims space in the collective unconscious along with the trickster, the shaman, and the temple priest. Anyone can conjure up images of the
magician offstage. He is floating a matchbook in a tavern or frolicking with his magic friends—they levitate and saw each other in half at Hollywood parties. Then what of the assistant? Who is she? And what is she really thinking? In professional magic the magician’s assistant is perhaps the biggest mystery.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir

“We played in all kinds of theaters. Cold and worn ones with rutted floors, and elegant ones with frilly curtains. We played junior college theaters, civic centers, and old downtown theaters that used
to be vaudeville houses. Sometimes we didn’t even have a stage, just a big, bleak room in a grange hall, armory, or fairgrounds. That was when we set up our proscenium, which we carried in the truck.
We girls dressed anywhere we could, in grimy bathrooms with bad lighting or in old chorus dressing rooms with sullied, paint-flecked mirrors.”
― Katy Grabel, The Magician's Daughter: A Memoir