Gregory Maguire

“We are loping sequences of chemical conversions, acting ourselves converted. We are twists of genes acting ourselves twisted; we are wicks of burning neuroses acting ourselves wicked. And nothing to be done about it. And nothing to be done about it.”

“It isn't whether you do it well or ill, it's that you do it all.”

“Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad...”

“No," she cried, "no, no, I'm not a harem, I'm not a woman, I'm not a person, no.”

“Chovia bastante naquela manhã. A luz tinha um tom acinzentado e musguento devido às nuvens baixas. Teve de admitir que a menina não era um cadáver. Estava viva. Talvez tivesse nascido gelada, mas agora estava viva. Ainda suja com o sangue do nascimento e o início aguado das suas fezes, Liir levou-a até à porta e ergue-a para a chuva. Lavada, revelou-se verde.”

“Deslizando as mãos ao longo das costelas dela até a planura do seu abdómen. Ela trazia-lhe sempre as mãos de volta aos seios delgados e expressivos; não permitia ser tocada por mãos abaixo da cintura. Moveram-se em simultâneo, diamantes azuis num campo verde.”

“Forget us, forget us all, it makes no difference now, but don't forget we loved it when we were alive.”

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

“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.”

“Children talk themselves out of their convictions as they grow up and become distracted by their huge selfish selves. All the literature is consistent on this point. Children begin to think they've imagined us.”

“Die Wahrheit lässt sich nach Geschmack gestaltenDenn Wahrheit ist, was alle dafür halten!”

“Everyone dies. It's a question of where and how, that's all.”

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

“I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.”

“From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.”

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

“There are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the anger separates according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It's a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex too. And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It's the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you would adjust and go on -- or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense.”

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

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

“Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.”

“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”

“Why should I keep myself so safe?” he asked her, but he was almost asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Arjikis, that they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving there, going through th same disputes, herding the same herds, as thy have done for five hundred years? And me, with a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life worth preserving?“I love you,” said Elphaba.“So that’s that then, and that’s it,” he answered her and himself. “And I love you. So I promise to be careful.”

“Oh now that's a blueprint for an impossibly rosy future”

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

“quoting reminds me there are other people in the world besides only me. And other thoughts besides mine, and other ways of thinking.”

“That's all I want- to do no harm.”

“...What is the use of beauty? i have lived my life surrounded by painters, and still I do not know the answer. But i suspect, some days, that beauty helps protect the spirit of mankind, swaddle it and succor it, so that we might survive. Beauty is no end in itself, but if it makes or lives less miserable so that we might be more kind-well, then, lets have beauty, painted on our porcelain, hanging on our walls, ringing through our stories.”

“Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense”

“Some said the original evil was the vacuum caused by the Fairy Queen Lurline leaving us alone here. When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil and maybe slpits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity”

“The moon passed overhead in its path from the Vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved back from the tall windows.”

“She watched the sun bleed water out of the icicle. Warm and cold working together to make an icicle. Warm and cold anger working together to make a fury, a fury worthy enough to use as a weapon against the old things that still needed fighting.”

“It was deliciously pagan.”

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

“Wishing is the beginning of imagination. They practice wishing when they are young things, and then -when they have grown - they have a developed imagination. Which can do some harm - greed, that kind of thing - but more often does them some good. They can imagine that things might be different. Might be other than they seem. Could be better.”

“Old Flossie settle down on the other side of What-the-Dickens and dragged some handiwork out of a sack. She armed herself with two thorns shaped into knitting needles. A wodge of curlicued metallic scrubbing pad supplied the threat. 'I knit handcuffs as a hobby,' explained Old Flossie happily, and set to work. 'Idle hands get up to no good, so I like to be prepared in case I meet up with any idle hands.”

“Finally the gorilla queen had had enough. She wrote a letter to the editor of Baboons' Home Journal and asked for advice. The editor printed her letter (but in order to protect her privacy, changed her name from 'Gorilla Queen' to 'Worried in the Royal Castle'). The editor suggested hiring a local hunter to take the little troublemaker out into the woods, kill him, and cut his heart out and bring it back. 'Check page 44 of last month's issue for delicious recipes, at just pennies a serving!' she concluded.”

“Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling porcupine," she crooned. "Little critters fried like fritters come out crunchy and divine.”

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

“Just follow that one road the whole time!... I hope they don't get lost, I'm so bad at giving directions..”

“Okay let's get this over with, no I'm not seasick, yes I've always been green, No I didn't eat grass as a child.”

“Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.”

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

“Before you save anyone else, you have to save yourself. otherwise, you'rejust a bundle of tics, a stringed puppet manipulated by the chance and the insensible wind.”

“There was much to hate in this world and too much to love.”

“Was it an accident that I saw Fiyero, I wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes, or is it just that world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?”

“The world was floods above and fire below”

“Approval is overrated...Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don't care for approval, and I don't mind doing without.”

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

“And a puzzle is for the piecing together, especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.”

“To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows”