Quotes from Gregory Maguire

The witch turned this way and that, I think I've kept my figure, don't you? she asked Mewster. Who else would want it? Don't be snarky. She batted her eyelashes at her reflection. I do believe I have my mother's eyes. Maybe it's time you give them back. Your mother's bee dead since the reign of Oleg the Incontinent.

There is a limit to what any farther can do.

bent ostentatiously to her work.

Every day you die a little and get a new chance to find out how next to live.

mori that time must also catch him at his crime: Painting

As illiterate can refer to a cat who refuses to deliver a litter of kittens and instead delivers newspapers it has no capacity to read.

They had ganged up on her, in the claustrophobic, loving way of families, and she wanted no more of it. 7

I may not be sure if monsters exist but I'd rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.

And that aroma of sex … soft baby asparagus cut with a weak solution of Clorox.

It is existentially, hyperbolically, quintessentially unknowable.

Nothing in the Grimmerie on how to depose a tyrant - nothing useful... Nothing there that described why men and women could turn out so horrible. Or so wonderful - if that ever happens anymore.

I myself am quite addicted to sin. It does keep my confessor busy, negotiating with Heaven on my behalf.

The only home for an exile is exile.

she couldn't hep but think abut the loss of her father, and how such a condition became constat, like an appendage or tumor. Hello, this is I, and these my arms and legs, wich are useful, and this inconvenient hump is my sorrow, which is less that useful, but I've learned how to hump it about with me, so pay it no mind.

She claims they give her moral virtue too, but then she has buckets more of that than she needs.

But then, the code of manliness requires us not to make comments on the intolerable ugliness of others. So I shall say no more about your condition, sir. But I do hope you manage to find some professional help.

Oh, mercy, there is nothing monstrously ugly about you. Ruth may be unpleasing, but you are merely plain. If anything, it's my beauty that's monstrous, for it sweeps away any other aspect of my character.

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

In the lives of children, pumpkins can turn into coaches, mice and rats into human beings. When we grow up, we learn that it's far more common for human beings to turn into rats. Nothing

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

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?

age doesn't always constitute wisdom. And people grow up on different schedules, one from the next.

For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each agent working in collusion and antagonism - like the cold and the sun alike creating a deadly spear of ice... Who is in thrall to whom? And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.

What condition is that? I've been in this condition my whole life," Liir answered. "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.