Quotes from Gregory Maguire

Glinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It's people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.

after discussion about what evil is, a question asked to Elphaba on why she killed Madame Morrible] Why did you do it? asked the hostess with spirit. The Witch shrugged. For fun? Maybe evil is an art form.

Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.

No wonder Wonderland isn't funny to read anymore: We live there full time. We need a break from it.

Skibbereen have a hard time at [math]; the best that the smartest of them can do with adding two plus two is guessing: three plus one. Correct, sort of, but not always useful.

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

...the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.

Wrong takes an awful long time to be proven, in my experience.

It may merely be apocryphal that when the Wizard saw the glass bottle he gasped, and clutched his heart. The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time. It is a matter of history, however, that shortly thereafter, the Wizard absconded from the Palace. He left in the way he had first arrived-- a hot-air balloon-- just a few hours before seditious ministers were to lead a Palace revolt and to hold an execution without trial.

People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It's the people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of. - Boq (WICKED)

I believe in the floor. I put it in place and I walk on it. Faith is a floor. If you don't work at making it for yourself, you have nothing to walk on.

She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.

And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.

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

All paths lead to the same place, and that place is whatever comes next.

I've told you before, I don't comprehend religion, although conviction is a concept I'm beginning to get. In any case, someone with a real religious conviction is, I propose, a religious convict, and deserves locking up.

We can't leave just like that." Cat was appalled. "Where can we find you if we need you again?" [Baba Yaga] "You can't. Listen, Little Drear, I hate saying good-byes. I have a good strategy for avoiding them." "What's that?" asked Anton. "I eat my guests.

When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity.

It's the age of daring. It's the only time we have. We must live in the present. We are young and alive.

The beauty of the day is the only thing that doesn't fade in time. Day after day, such beauty revives itself.

The cunning old cow, thought Melena. She is trying that rarest of strategies, telling the truth, and making it sound plausible.

It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.

Only he with the hobbled foot knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can appreciate what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us. That we in our sinful souls can ever imagine charity- 'She can't go on for a moment. 'We may not always be able to practice charity, but that in this world we can even imagine it at all! That act of daring requires the greatest challenge

No one is exempt from grief.