Quotes from Gregory Maguire

I was just about to begin writing 'Mirror Mirror', within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.

Wisdom is not the understanding of mystery. Wisdom is accepting that mystery is beyond understanding. That's what makes it mystery.

From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.

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

Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.

Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history.

Happy endings are still endings.

Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you're a bit larger than you used to be.

And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever.

In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats.

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

You confuse not speaking with not listening.

She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way.

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.

Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. Beautiful in the concept, if we're lucky, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out.

No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst - there is always choice.

I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! I mean they're just shoes... let it go!

Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

I never use the words HUMANIST or HUMANITARIAN, as it seems to me that to be human is to be capable of the most heinous crimes in nature.