Quotes from Gregory Maguire

There's a reason we live in time. We are too small a flask, even as an Elephant, to tolerate too much knowing. Instead, truth must drip through us as through a pipette, to allow only moments of apprehension. Moments diffuse and miniature enough to be survived.

a blur, the way all children's faces truly are. For they blur as they run; they blur as they grow and change so fast; and they blur to keep us from loving them too deeply, for their protection, and also for ours.

Noon is a disguise of whiteness put on by the eternal Night behind it.

After all, what kind of a life is it that is not pestered by insects? A perfect one, and since life is not perfect, this cannot be life.

Quanto mais civilizados nos tornamos, mais horrendas são as nossas diversões.

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 offence.

Secrets are revealed as you are ready to understand them. It seems capricious and mean-spirited of the Grimmerie to hold back, to yield and then to tease with a single page – but then the world is the same way, isn't it. The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private language and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

The idea of religion worked for Nessarose, it worked for Frex. There may be no real city in the clouds, but dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.

It doesn't pose or represent the world. It becomes.

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's 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.

I care as much as I can, but I don't spend energy caring about things I cannot resolve.

I'm the very glass of fashion and the mold of form. Aren't I, Mewster? You look like a walking hairball, said the kitten.

And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever after of a Witch, there is no happily; In the story of a Witch, there is no afterword.

He set out once more, with a sense that his life would be rich in setting outs, and perhaps poorer in homecomings.

Use your talent at sorcery, don't be used by it.

Hens were wandering about like ladies at a lyceum tea trying to find their friends before selecting their seats.

I think that's shameful, even if it's just a story, to propose an afterlife for evil... Any afterlife notion is a manipulation and a sop. It's shameful the way the unionists and the pagans both keep talking up hell for intimidation and the airy Other Land for reward.

Isn't that funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity linger--

Lurline est la reine des fées qui volait au-dessus des déserts de sable, avant d'apercevoir le splendide pays vert d'Oz. Elle laissa sa fille Ozma pour diriger ce pays en son absence, promettant de revenir aider Oz dans ses plus noirs moments.

Life is a very cheap thing here. Cheap and dear all at once, said the rose from her grave. That's the thing. You'll figure it out sooner or later.

Plus nous devenons civilisés, plus nos amusements se font horribles.

I came here to propose that we meet from time to time. That we meet as friends. That, free of expectations, we come to know each other as dear friends. I do not deny that you overwhelm me with your beauty. You are the moon in the season of shadowlight; you are the fruit of the candlewood tree; you are the phoenix in circles of flight. You are the mythical sea.

It's been a long, rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.

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