Top 227 Quotes & Sayings by Gregory Maguire

I actually prefer female voices to listen to, mostly, but among the male singers whose voices I like are Jeff Buckley, Art Garfunkel, that sort of voice. Contemporary crooners rather than rockers.

I like to think I'm a pretty good-natured guy and pretty civil and probably not ever truly guilty in any serious way of any legal infractions.

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.

I'm a comic writer, in some ways, and a comic person when I'm up at a podium, in order to disguise the fact that in my heart I'm disgustingly earnest.

In a sense, 'Out of Oz' is an examination of how individuals keep going, keep reinventing themselves and their lives, even after life-altering complications have afflicted them.

I didn't even realize this at first, but there's almost no central character in any of my 24 books who doesn't have a dead mother or a lost parent.

The story of 'Mirror Mirror' is in many ways a story about evolution. It's about the evolution of a child into an adult. It's about the evolution of those dwarves into something a little less rock-like, a little more humanoid. It's about the evolution of history, too, from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the light of the Age of Reason.

I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

While I pride myself on trying to be creative in all areas of my life, I have occasionally gone overboard, like the time I decided to bring to a party a salad that I constructed, on a huge rattan platter, to look like a miniature scale model of the Gardens of Babylon.

I like classical music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and I adore Bach above all.

My first job was scooping ice cream at Friendly's in Albany, New York. I hated the work, most of my colleagues, and the uniform, and I more or less lost my taste for ice cream permanently.

My tastes in music tend to favor anything my kids don't like, out of natural antipathy amplified by a sort of malicious glee.

When I write a book, I write very cleanly from page one to the last page. I hardly ever write out of sequence.

I never write a book unless I can't help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.

I had written children's books for 14 years before I published 'Wicked.' And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

I do love to sing. Had I a longer set of thigh bones and a sweeter voice, I should have loved to be a performer.

When I began 'Wicked', I really thought of it entirely as a one-off, as the English say. There was no intention that there should ever be a follow up, because the subtitle was 'The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West'. She was dead and gone, as the book says, at the end.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless you're really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.

I was just about to begin writing 'Mirror Mirror', within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.

Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.

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

People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us... It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.

And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever.

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

The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation.

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

You could say that Elphaba brought us together,' said Boq softly. 'I'm closer to her and so I'm closer to you.' Galinda seemed to give up. She leaned her head back on the velvet cushions of the swing and said, 'Boq, you know despite myself I think you're a little sweet. You're a little sweet and you're a little charming and you're a little maddening and you're a little habit-forming.' Boq held his breath. But you're little!' she concluded. 'You're a Munchkin, for god's sake!' He kissed her, he kissed her, he kissed her, little by little by little.

Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.

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

No, she wasn't losing language. She was choking on it.

You confuse not speaking with not listening.

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.

All our lives are activity without meaning; we burrow ratlike into life and we squirm ratlike through it and ratlike we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why shouldn't we hear a voice of prophecy.

Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.

Growth and change were viewed as reactions to conditions met

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.

As long as people are going to call you lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.

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

I know you don't want to hear this but someone has to say it! You are out of control! I mean they're just shoes... let it go!

Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.

Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.

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

I had written childrens books for 14 years before I published Wicked. And none of them were poorly reviewed, and none of them sold enough for me to be able to buy a bed.

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.

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

Immortality is a chancy thing; it cannot be promised or earned. Perhaps it cannot even be identified for what it is.

One plus one equals both.

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.

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.

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

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

I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.

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.

It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement.

Of course. You get everything from books.

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

I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.

The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.

Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless youre really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.