Quotes from Gregory Maguire

But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.

Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt.

I know this: The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness, she said. And of women? Women are weaker, but their weakness is full of cunning and an equally rigid moral certainty. Since their arena is smaller, their capacity for real damage is less alarming. Though being more intimate they are the more treacherous.

Though who knows the architecture of the mind, and whether the arches that open upon discrete episodes are ordered in any way sequentialy?

The person who asks questions like yours always gets to choose the terms

Take care of yourself and beware high connections with bastards, because when the revolution comes there won't be mercy for toadying ass-lickers.

He was rewarded with a promotion to immortality, there forever to caper with other immortal companions who sounded, frankly, a bit out of control.

The Ozmists around him went iridescent emerald, like light striking a thousand whirring beetles in flight, gold and emerald, emerald and gold, the colors of Lurlinemas, the colors of pine polen in champagne sunlight.

I don't believe in the concept of 'real' or 'realer' people. You don't? She smiled, not nicely. When I do disappear again, dearie, I'll surely be less real than I am now.

You might forget an event but you can never go back to living as you did before it's influence was applied upon you

Nunca uso las palabras humanista o humanitario, porque, para mí, el ser humano es capaz de cometer los crímenes más atroces de la naturaleza.

By that token, you might forget an event, but you can never go back to living as you did before its hidden influence was applied upon you.

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

The instinct towards panic, once experienced, cannot be unlearned.

El amor nos convierte a todos en cazadores

The alluring stars in an apparently endless sky had, after all, been a disguise for the cloud of spirits. Ghosts perhaps could lie in death as well as creatures could lie in life.

Not in a dog's age. Not since that Dorothy. And you and the others. Did Dorothy ever stop whimpering so? She'll grow up to require the convent, mark my words. Or a husband with a good strong backhand. Her fanny wants spanking badly.

Everything was not merely relative, it was-how to put it?-relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both.

Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit forming too. A stiffness of the attitude.

He did not approve of anarchy (well, he knew he was in lazy doubt about everything; doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction).

We are all migrants. We are exiled from the place where meaning meant something.

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.

We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it - we're slow learners, we women - we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production. But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But *they* can't learn at all.

You are too good, Mother Maunt, she said. She took the cash with her strong hand, and made a gesture of deference with her limp one. No one is too good, said the Superior Maunt, but nicely, and retired with surprising speed behind the cloister doors.