Gregory Maguire Quotes

“Happy endings are still endings.”

“How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.”

“It's the only condition I know. Bitter Love, Loneliness, contempt for corruption, blind hope. It's where I live. A permanent state of bereavement. This is nothing new.”

“This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.”

“One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her~is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil?”

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

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

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

“The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective.”

“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.”

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

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

“There were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors”

“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.”

“She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“You confuse not speaking with not listening.”

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

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

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

“Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle”

“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!”

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

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

“Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.”

“They moved together, blue diamonds on a green field.”

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

“I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”

“The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.”

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

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

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

“It's unbecoming," she agreed. "A perfect word for my new life. Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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”

“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.”

“It's the endlessly thinking about yourself that causes such heart shame.”

“Approval is overrated. Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it.”

“If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.”

“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-”

“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.”

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

“Even God used silence as a strategy.”

“Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?”

“She is no longer I, she is too long ago, she is only she…”

“I learned failure early and mastered it.”

“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.”

“We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.”

“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.”

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

“There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.”

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

“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.”

“A man is called a traitor, or liberator. A rich man is a theif or philanthropist. Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It's all in which label is able to persist.”

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