Gregory Maguire Quotes - Page 7

Even God used silence as a strategy.

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

...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.

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

...I dabble in causes and effects.

How deeply bound by cords of family anger we all are[...]None of us breaks free.

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

Behold the male beast roaring in the jungle for his mate," said Elphaba. "See how the female beast giggles behind a shrub while she organizes her face to say, Pardon dear, did you say something?

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.

The world was floods above and fire below

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

His avenging angel had come to call him home. A suicide was waiting for him back in his own world, and by now he ought to have learned enough to get through it successfully.

Not everyone is born a witch or a saint. Not everyone is born talented, or crooked, or blessed; some are born definite in no particular at all. We are a fountain of shimmering contradictions, most of us. Beautiful in the concept, if we're lucky, but frequently tedious or regrettable as we flesh ourselves out.

Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversations was flow.

The colossal might of wickedness: how we love to locate it massively elsewhere. But so much of it comes down to what each one of us does between breakfast and bedtime.

If magic was present, it moved under the skin of the world, beneath the ability of human eyes to catch sight of it.

He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.

Starlight and comet tails burned the tips of endless grass below into hammered silver. Like thousands of tapers in the chapel, just blown out but still glowing. If one could drown in the grass...it might be the best way to die.

Doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction.

You're fun to look at," decided Galinda. Boq's face fell. "Fun?" he said. I'd give a lot to achieve fun," Elphaba said. "The best I usually hope for is stirring, and when people say that they're usually referring to digestion-

That's all I want- to do no harm.

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

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.

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

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