Gregory Maguire Quotes

How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.

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

No one is exempt from grief.

People always did like to talk, didn't they? That's why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of restraint.

Waking up was a daily cruelty, an affront, and she avoided it by not sleeping.

Small steps to the madhouse still get us there at last

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.

That's what misbehavior is all about, just a little extra loving being asked for.

at least i'm talkng to myself. instead of giving myself the cold shoulder

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

So he stalked her again. Love makes hunters of us all.