Quotes from Gregory Maguire

He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.

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

Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly.

Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.

However in the world did her skin come green? Nanny wondered, stupidly, for Melena blanched and Frex reddened, and the baby held her breath as if trying to turn blue to please them all. Nanny had to slap her to make her breath again.

The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective.

I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can't hurt you the way the future can.

Tell me to mind my own business, tell me to go fuck myself, to piss, off, go on, say it, but don't tell me nothing's wrong.

Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.

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

Don't wish,said Rain, don't start. Wishing only...

That's all I want- to do no harm.

I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.

I hate to be obvious, added the Scarecrow, but you'd have saved yourself a heap of trouble if you weren't too cheap to invest in a leash, Dorothy.

Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.

Her sister's shoes. They sparkeled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkeled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood and thorny stars.

Of course. You get everything from books.

Begging your pardon, sir....One population can't make peace with another by force.

And there the wicked witch stayed for a long long time.' Did she ever come out?' Not yet.

Science, my dears, is the systematic dissection of nature, to reduce it to working parts that more or less obey universal laws. Sorcery moves in the opposite direction. It doesn't rend, it repairs. It is synthesis rather than analysis. It builds anew rather than revealing the old. In the hands of someone truly skilled,...it is Art.

We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness

And in the cave there lived a wicked old witch. Did she ever some out? Not yet.

Love makes hunters of us all.

There may be no city in the clouds, but dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.