Gregory Maguire

“Is that, in the end - that capacity to hurt - the most essential ingredient for a ruler?”

“She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.”

“There's no need to hear gossip about government. It'll only give you gas.”

“. . . this girl who seemed, increasingly, to be interested in learning to read everything except how human beings talked to one another.”

“The mister days that letters are the key, but even when you know the whole family, there's so many combinations you can make. And they break their word.”

“[Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?""You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]”

“How children love the broken thing! And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.”

“…but the tale itself is a trickster and doesn’t hesitate to lie. It is anachronistic with a vengeance. It emerges always and everywhere, overt or disguised, pureblood or hybrid, and healthy as sin.”

“The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.”

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

“Such silly things, children -- and so embarrassing -- because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.”

“Liir held Chistery in his lap and sobbed into his scalp. Chistery said, "Well, we'll wail while woe'll wheel," and he cried along with Liir.”

“I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral," said the Wizard. "In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical.”

“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis, those who are the most themselves are the victims.”

“Animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.”

“I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.”

“The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.”

“The real thing about evil… you figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.”

“The devil is a very big angel, but a very little man.”

“You always had an eye for the fellow with a decent helping of sausage and hard-boiled eggs.”

“Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.”

“There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.”

“O beautiful, to make escapeAnd leave this world behind.Had I to stay another dayI'd lose my fucking mind...”

“Ah, the inner eye blinks, and the spirit trembles, at the dangerous cost of seeing one's self as one is.”

“The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build.”

“When you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even it it's a moronic proclamation ... Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”

“Only he with the hobbled foot fully knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can apprehend what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us.”

“I have the distinct feeling I'm not in Oz anymore,' said Brrr.”

“Do good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?”

“They did the best they could. Besides I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this." She twined her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.”

“Well, I learned to cook. At my age," she told him. "What's next? Art therapy? Anyway, I've had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases down on any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go." "Goodbye," said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman. "Not to them," said Glinda, "To me."She turned eyes that were saucerly upon Glinda. "Mum?”

“I'm just doing your tea, Mum," he said. "Are you all imbecilic? Is that a requirement of enlisted men? It's Lady GLINDA!" She was losing it, big time. "Get me Murth!”

“This is what fun is like," said Rain, almost to herself.”

“My job is to protect you, Lady Glinda even if you are loosing your mind.”

“The wall read:ELPHIE LIVESOZMA LIVESTHE WIZARD LIVESand thenEVERYONE LIVES BUT US.”

“Glinda waved dismissively. Then she tucked her hand against her mouth and bit her knuckles. It was hard to tell if her pretty ways were studied or innate. "Oh, oh," she managed, "I don't know that I'll see you again- and you remind me so of her.”

“You need my help? What for? Bread, cash, a fake identity to help you slip sideways through the cracks? Tell me what you need, tell me why I should help, and I'll see what I can do. In memory of Elphaba. You knew her." Her head titled again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. "You knew my Elphie!”

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

“How could anyone live without flying?”

“There was something about words and music together that allowed people to get nearest to honest truth about what was most difficult to say. Paradoxically, only through the essential instantaneity of music could you approach its eternal pertinence.”

“I hate New Year's Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven't yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn't matter.”

“He had thought love as a policy made a lot of sense for those who could manage it, and anyone who could manage it belonged in religious life. The rest of us have to struggle with more ordinary love, the common or garden variety: love as a crippling condition. Love as a syndrome.”

“But his face had that hollow look, as if there was something gone... you know that look. The inward focus. Distantly attentive to the home you're missing, or the someone you're missing. That look that a bird has when it turns it dry reptilian eye on you. That look that doesn't see you because the mind is filled up with someone it would rather see.”

“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.”

“A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask...A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?”

“To the grim poor there need be no pourquoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her--is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil...?”

“And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”

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

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

“One never knows how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her — is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is the very least question of definitions.”