Quotes from Gregory Maguire

A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame.

My blessing, and also my advice. Spend what you have, give it away, Dirk. All, all away. The only chance to replenish yourself is to use up what you are given. It's called redemption in some circles.

Learning to suffer is called growing up. If we postponed all our sorrows, could we be capable of doing the work we're called to do?

I think you know if you're different, he ventured. I think you know if you're gifted. How could you not? You know if you feel set apart, said Nanny, but who doesn't feel that? Maybe we're all gifted. We just don't know it.

I'm not some blushing schoolgirl, stop that nonsense.

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

The louder the cannon, the deafer the peacemakers.

You could catalog the thousand ways people shrink from life, as if chance and change are by their nature toxic, disfiguring.

she heard Mrs. Brummidge hiss at Rhoda, "Unseemly!" with the same tone of scandal she might have used had she been saying "Strumpet!" or "Baptist!

Still, there is no law that says all decent things must be permanent. Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

They moved together, blue diamonds on a green field.

I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.

There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.

The truth isn't a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on.

Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.

This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.

...and he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her, little by little by little.

I do love to sing. Had I a longer set of thigh bones and a sweeter voice, I should have loved to be a performer.

So he stalked her again. Love makes hunters of us all.

The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

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.

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless you're really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.

The story of 'Mirror Mirror' is in many ways a story about evolution. It's about the evolution of a child into an adult. It's about the evolution of those dwarves into something a little less rock-like, a little more humanoid. It's about the evolution of history, too, from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of the Age of Reason.