A • Magic word "I can't touch it without an abracadabra either from her or from Grand- pappy." -- Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love (197 ) "[T]he right abracadabra to select the winning lottery number . . ." -- Stephen Jay Gould, I Have Landed: The End of a Beginning in Natural History (200 ) "[T]he appropriate abracadabra may be . . ." -- Andrew Tobias, Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds (1995) "[H]oping to acquire an abracadabra or open sesame . . ." -- Helen Valentine, Better Than Beauty: A Guide to Charm (2002) "The magician says 'Abracadabra,' and the genie comes out of the bottle." -- Charles Hartshome, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984) • Mantra "[B]reathe in -- abra, breathe out -- cadabra, abra, cadabra. If you can do this successfully in a quiet place, with near total relaxation, you will achieve a particularly satisfying state of mind. Some would call it a religious experience." -- Bill Greene, Think Like a Tycoon (1980) • Meaningless "The word good, when applied to [God], becomes meaningless: like abracadabra." -- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (1961) • Moment in time "The cooking of the dish is nearly as quick as abracadabra." -- Pierre Franey, The New York Times 60-Minute Gourmet (2000) "She'd have me in a cell before I could say abracadabra." -- Jim Butcher, Fool Moon (2001) "Before one could say abracadabra, they had moved to a corner of the lawn . . ." -- James Duffy, Dog Bites Man: City Shocked (2001) • Momentousness "[W]ith an abracadabra tone in his voice . . ." -- Stuart Ewen, PR! (1998) • Mumbo-jumbo -- Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (1968) "Mumbo jumbo and abracadabra, all of it." -- Lesley Blanch, The Wilder Shores of Love: The Exotic True-Life Stories of Isabel Burton, Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, Jane Digby, and Isabelle Eberhardt (2002) "I was growing stupid listening to nothing but statistical abracadab ra." -- Henry Miller, Plexus (196 ) "By the time Lucien, hunted down and on the run, had brought himself to read this abracadabra, he had received notice that a judgment had been obtained against him." -- Honoré de Balzac, Lost Illusions, translated by Kathleen Raine (1951) • Music "Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate- writing of the gods, the abracadabra which the learned and the ignorant alike muff because the axel has been unhooked." -- Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn (1961)