Gregory Maguire

“Within a few moments the last of day became the first of night, a magic as peculiar and welcome as any other.”

“What is strange is that we may remember what we have done, but not always why we did it.”

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

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

“Tarde o temprano, a todos nos alcanza el rayo.”

“To look into the mirror is to see the future, in blood and rubies.”

“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.”

“Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn't it?”

“Doğuştan bir yeteneğin varsa ya da doğuştan iyiliğe eğilimin varsa... Sonunda aklını kaçırıyorsun.”

“Öyle insansever, hayırsever gibi sözcükler kullanmam ben. Bence insan olmak demek tabiatta işlenebilecek en iğrenç cinayetleri işlemeye muktedir olmak demektir.”

“Bu dünyada cefa ahirette sefa mı? Yok daha neler!”

“They'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love.”

“I know this: The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness, she said.”

“I do not deny that you overwhelm me with your beauty. You are the moon in the season of shadow light; you are the fruit of the candlewood tree; you are the phoenix in circles of flight --.”

“How she wanted to put away adult things and go back to seeing through a looking-glass, darkly.”

“But there was the mirror in which I would glimpse his handsome form, because mirrors don't lie about men, only women.”

“Every choice brings wisdom in its wake. If you got to have the wisdom first, it wouldn't be a choice--just policy”

“When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies.”

“I take all the credit in the world for my own foolishness.”

“But now? Now? Children in the twentieth and this early twenty-first century hated the Alice books, couldn't read them, and why should they? Their world had strayed into madness long ago. Look at the planet. Rain is acid, poisonous. Sun causes cancer. Sex=death. Children murder other children. Parents lie, leaders lie, the churches have less moral credibility than Benetton ads.And the faces of missing children staring out from milk cartons-imagine all those poor Lost Boys, and Lost Girls, not in Neverland but lost here, lost now. No wonder Wonderland isn't funny anymore: We live there full-time. We need a break from it.”

“What more does one ask of life, really, but to stagger from moment to moment with a reason to wake and wait for the next reason to wake?”

“He had forgotten how convincing the world could look, how sure of itself: its outlines and edges; it's gradations, recessions, protrusions; it's startling and vulgar colors.”

“What will I do if I find myself with a heart?" "Lose it constantly, I imagine.”

“Please, I know nothing of the world, except my father is lost in it.”

“Damn the human stomach, this fat betrayor of ideals”

“No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.”

“The fairytale belongs to the poor. I know of no fairytale which upholds the tyrant or takes the part of the strong against the weak. A fascist fairytale is an absurdity.”

“One plus one equals both.”

“You have your own life to live, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows.”

“Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a painting endures.”

“What good is it being a painter if you can't paint yourself?”

“The sun is the biggest metaphor. The sun is the first candle. She can get there by its light.”

“Very few things in the world are certain, but morning is one of them.”

“He had no other plans for the rest of his life. He followed her.”

“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.”

“I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read.”

“To grow a melody?" "You can't grow a melody on purpose,” she said, and slyly added, “you have to plant an accidental.”

“You can endure any sort of prison if you can apprehend a window in the dark.”

“Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.”

“When have we required anything of you? Except to survive?”

“But who could teach daughters how to fly? Parents were by definition earthbound, grub eaters, feet in their own coffins, by dint of being parents.”

“It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.”

“The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).”

“At its most elemental, a spell is no more than a recipe for change.”

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

“Love makes hunters of us all.”

“Blogis nėra negeri poelgiai, o tai, kaip bjauriai po to jautiesi.”

“Mergaitėms reikia šalto pykčio. Joms būtina apgalvota neapykanta, pagieža, leidžianti išvengti kompromisų, vengimas atleisti. Joms reikia žinoti, jog pasakytų žodžių neatsiims, niekada, niekada. Tai kompensacija už ribotas moterų galimybes pasaulyje. <...> Stok skersai kelio moteriai, ir neabejok - ji nepamirš nuoskaudos ir puoselės savo kerštą nors ir visą amžinybę, jei to reikės.”

“That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?”

“How truly novel. The emotional life of furniture. I never.”