Gregory maguire quotes

It was deliciously pagan.

One plus one equals both.

I learned failure early and mastered it.

Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.

It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial.

The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar.

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.

Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense

It’s the place of the story, beginning here, in the meadow of late summer flowers, thriving before the Atlantic storms drive wet and winter upon them all.

My first job was scooping ice cream at Friendly's in Albany, New York. I hated the work, most of my colleagues, and the uniform, and I more or less lost my taste for ice cream permanently.

... the decades looked on and didn't notice her passing. They stared from their fixed mounts across at each other and didn't see revolution striding between them, on her way to destiny.

It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all.

Always the bridesmaid , never the bride." Always the godfather, never the god".

...looking at him makes her feel like laughing all over - as if she could laugh not just with her mouth but with her eyes, her heart, her very limbs.

The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.

And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

Just follow that one road the whole time!... I hope they don't get lost, I'm so bad at giving directions.

Why lock yourself in your own cage when someone is handing you a key?

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

She's sent the crows out to blind the guests coming for dinner!" What?" She's BLINDING THE GUESTS COMING FOR DINNER!" Well, that's one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose.

Okay let's get this over with, no I'm not seasick, yes I've always been green, No I didn't eat grass as a child.

He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled,...it is Art.

Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.

You're fun to look at," decided Galinda. Boq's face fell. "Fun?" he said. I'd give a lot to achieve fun," Elphaba said. "The best I usually hope for is stirring, and when people say that they're usually referring to digestion-

Doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction.

Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.

I had written childrens books for 14 years before I published Wicked. And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

That's what misbehavior is all about, just a little extra loving being asked for.

I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out.

Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.

[Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?" "You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]

Old Flossie settle down on the other side of What-the-Dickens and dragged some handiwork out of a sack. She armed herself with two thorns shaped into knitting needles. A wodge of curlicued metallic scrubbing pad supplied the threat. 'I knit handcuffs as a hobby,' explained Old Flossie happily, and set to work. 'Idle hands get up to no good, so I like to be prepared in case I meet up with any idle hands.

I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.

I hate to be obvious," added the Scarecrow, "but you'd have saved yourself a heap of trouble if you weren't too cheap to invest in a leash, Dorothy.

But his face had that hollow look, as if there was something gone... you know that look. The inward focus. Distantly attentive to the home you're missing, or the someone you're missing. That look that a bird has when it turns it dry reptilian eye on you. That look that doesn't see you because the mind is filled up with someone it would rather see.

quoting reminds me there are other people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts besides mine, and other ways of thinking.

If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.

No wonder Wonderland isn't funny to read anymore: We live there full time. We need a break from it.

Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.

Was it an accident that I saw Fiyero, I wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes, or is it just that world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?

That was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness-and life isn't the same now. It's wonderful, but it isn't the same.

Begging your pardon, sir....One population can't make peace with another by force.

Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow.

Children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of restraint.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless youre really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.

However in the world did her skin come green?" Nanny wondered, stupidly, for Melena blanched and Frex reddened, and the baby held her breath as if trying to turn blue to please them all. Nanny had to slap her to make her breath again.

It isn’t hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.

Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history.

No one is exempt from grief.

I hate New Year's Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven't yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn't matter.

Wishing is the beginning of imagination. They practice wishing when they are young things, and then -when they have grown - they have a developed imagination. Which can do some harm - greed, that kind of thing - but more often does them some good. They can imagine that things might be different. Might be other than they seem. Could be better.

Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.

So he stalked her again. Love makes hunters of us all.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

The world unwraps itself to you, again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew.

I was just about to begin writing Mirror Mirror, within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.

I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! I mean they're just shoes... let it go!

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

The world was floods above and fire below

And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever.

People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.

The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

Even God used silence as a strategy.

...but the tale itself is a trickster and doesn't hesitate to lie. It is anachronistic with a vengeance. It emerges always and everywhere, overt or disguised, pureblood or hybrid, and healthy as sin.

Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. Beautiful in the concept, if we're lucky, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out.

...and he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, little by little by little.

Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad.

Oh now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future

You could say that Elphaba brought us together,' said Boq softly. 'I'm closer to her and so I'm closer to you.' Galinda seemed to give up. She leaned her head back on the velvet cushions of the swing and said, 'Boq, you know despite myself I think you're a little sweet. You're a little sweet and you're a little charming and you're a little maddening and you're a little habit-forming.' Boq held his breath. But you're little!' she concluded. 'You're a Munchkin, for god's sake!' He kissed her, he kissed her, he kissed her, little by little by little.

No," she cried, "no, no, I'm not a harem, I'm not a woman, I'm not a person, no.

I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.

So let my hands and my face make their way in this world, let my hungry eyes see, my tongue taste.

Notice, notice; let noticing take the place of screaming.

We are loping sequences of chemical conversions, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it. And nothing to be done about it.

The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.

To look into the mirror is to see the future, in blood and rubies.

From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.

Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.

Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.

It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement.

But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him "Yero, my hero," and that melted his heart.

Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.

...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.

When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.

I never use the words HUMANIST or HUMANITARIAN, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature.

Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.

Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless grass below into hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the chapel, just blown out but still glowing. If one could drown in the grass...it might be the best way to die.

She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness.

A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.

Growth and change were viewed as reactions to conditions met

Forget us, forget us all, it makes no difference now, but don't forget we loved it when we were alive.

To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

I learned to fly on a broom," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "I can learn to milk a goat, I bet." Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found.

at least i'm talkng to myself. instead of giving myself the cold shoulder

The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

The melody faded like a rainbow after a storm, or like winds calming down at last; and what was left was calm, and possibility, and relief.

His avenging angel had come to call him home. A suicide was waiting for him back in his own world, and by now he ought to have learned enough to get through it successfully.

You confuse not speaking with not listening.

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience.

Of course. You get everything from books.

Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery.

No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst - there is always choice.

Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.

There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.

The storm dropped a house on her head.

They moved together, blue diamonds on a green field.

No, she wasn't losing language. She was choking on it.

If you have an ancestor who is a Benedictine monk, we would rather not know it.

So she listened hard. And she began to evolve, because stories work their magic that way. They build conviction and erode conviction in equal measure.

All our lives are activity without meaning; we burrow ratlike into life and we squirm ratlike through it and ratlike we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why shouldn't we hear a voice of prophecy.

Approval is overrated...Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without.

Her sister's shoes. They sparkeled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkeled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood and thorny stars.