Quotes from Gregory Maguire

You know our Alice. She plays hide-and-seek but sometimes forgets to ask someone to look for her.

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

What good is it being a painter if you can't paint yourself?

Don't take the advice of anyone you meet here. We're all mad.

The years peeled slowly off, one by one, or perhaps dozens at a time.

from the short story The Honorary Shepherds)...you can't be kicked out of a faith. Faith starts inside your heart and ends up in eternity. All you can be kicked out of is a building, which is the bus stop of faith, sort of, and what's a building?

But this was fancy; she was succumbing to fancy in a way she hadn't done before.

Perhaps he just didn't have the feeling for faith. It seemed to be a kind of language, one whose gnarled syntax needed to be heard from birth, or it remained forever unintelligible. But he wished he had a faith now, some scrap for something: for elphaba was dead, and to act as if the world were no more changed than if some branch of a tree had snapped off- well, it didn't seem right.

You lost your copper as well as your faith in wishes, and prayers.

Well, your opinion is as good as hers, I think," said Elphaba. "That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

Given a long enough time, of course, a wide enough frame, there is nothing said or done, ever, that isn't ironic in the end.

Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

Listen, we're all trapped in our own lives. You, me, everyone we've ever met.

How she wanted to put away adult things and go back to seeing through a looking-glass, darkly.

The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective. Even a bowed mirror works primarily by engaging the eyes, and she who centers herself in its surface is unlikely to notice anyone in the background who lacks a certain status, distinction.

The moon passed overhead in its path from the Vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved back from the tall windows.

But the pinkness and whiteness of underskirts and camisoles, the frilliness of foundation garments, the rustle about the bustle and the fuss about the bust.

The toys can help in the battle. Mother Ginger? I doubt it! Never underestimate the value of a mother in wartime. She has the most to fight for.

but she wrote out some extra words on a piece of paper so Rain could practice reading. Is this a magic spell? the girl asked her. Don't let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it is a moronic proclamation by the Emperor.  Words have their impact, girl.  Mind your manners.  I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing. -Out of Oz

As Solomon said in the Old Book, if two women squabble over which of them is the mother of a certain infant, the way to solve the problem is to cut the baby in half and share the baby in parts." "That's revolting." "Is it? I always wondered if that baby was a colicky brat and both women were really trying to pawn it off on the other one.

History is a long time in the making.

Death might be the only way forward for someone. Or it might seem so at the time

Yes, freedom is magnificent. But freedom is hard work.

Please, I know nothing of the world, except my father is lost in it.