Quotes from Gregory Maguire

All of life hinges on what one does next, until finally one makes the wrong choice.

No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.

The overdressed traveller betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing, while the true traveller knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.

Being normal isn't that miserable. Try it for a thousand years in a row, and you'll be grateful for a little zaniness.

you'll understand when you're older. Or anyway not understanding will become second nature, and it won't matter.

It was hard to tell what her weapons were, except for that sort of inane good sense and emotional honesty.

Our private lives are like a colony of worlds expanding, contracting, breathing universal air into separate knowledges. Or like several packs of cards shuffled together by an expert anonymous hand, and dealt out in a random, amused or even hostile way.

Your childhood, said Yackle coaxingly, as if she could smell his thoughts. As if she could sniff out those passages he hadn't chosen to retail at drink parties. Her words lulled him. The past, even a bitter past, is usually more pungent than the present, or at least better organized in the mind.

To grow a melody? You can't grow a melody on purpose," she said, and slyly added, "you have to plant an accidental.

If you're ever dragged from your chambers at midnight, blindfolded and gagged, without being told whether you're off to a firing squad or a surprise birthday party, you'll find that you turn and return to that pivotal moment.

But who could teach daughters how to fly? Parents were by definition earthbound, grub eaters, feet in their own coffins, by dint of being parents.

When have we required anything of you? Except to survive?

Those born dull remain dull

Don't fasten on Dorothy. Only unanswerable longing lies down that road. Gone is gone.

It never is the who, is it? It's always the why. -Elphaba

Such silly things, children—and so embarrassing—because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something.

Lost is not an address, it's not permission to fail, it's not an excuse.

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.

There is a limit to the nonsense even a dream can attempt.

Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through. To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.

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

After all, a book can be set aside for weeks, or for good. (Burned in the grate.) Alternatively, a story can be adored for centuries. But it cannot be derailed. A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking. It is progressive and inevitable as the seasons. Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer.

Mergait?ms reikia šalto pyk?io. Joms b?tina apgalvota neapykanta, pagieža, leidžianti išvengti kompromis?, vengimas atleisti. Joms reikia žinoti, jog pasakyt? žodži? neatsiims, niekada, niekada. Tai kompensacija už ribotas moter? galimybes pasaulyje. <...> Stok skersai kelio moteriai, ir neabejok - ji nepamirš nuoskaudos ir puosel?s savo keršt? nors ir vis? amžinyb?, jei to reik?s.

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