Quotes by Gregory Maguire

“To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.”

“Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history.”

“Those times are over and gone, and good-riddance to them, too. We were hopelessly high-spirited. Now we're the thick-waisted generation, dragging along our children behind us and carrying our paren...”

“Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history”

“Your childhood," said Yackle coaxingly, as if she could smell his thoughts. As if she could sniff out those passages he hadn't chosen to retail at drink parties. Her words lulled him. The past, eve...”

“A world emerging, daily, out of nothing, a world that we trust to resemble what we've seen previously. We should know better.”

“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 e...”

“Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our sp...”

“Oh, everything is gorgeous once it's gone.”

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

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

“What's big, thick, makes the earth move, and wants to have its way with you?" "I don't know, but can you introduce me?”

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

“Hello, this is I, and these are my arms and legs, which are useful, and this inconvenient hump is my sorrow, which is less than useful, but I've learned how to hump it around, so pay it no mind.”

“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...”

“The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing, while the true traveler knows that the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.”

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

“Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the n...”

“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 a...”

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