Top 300 Gregory Maguire Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Gregory Maguire

2. “This is why you shouldn’t fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

4. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

7. “Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.”

— Gregory Maguire

8. “One plus one equals both.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

10. “From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.”

— Gregory Maguire

11. “All paths lead to the same place, and that place is whatever comes next.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

13. “The truth isn’t a thing of fact or reason. It is simply what everyone agrees on.”

— Gregory Maguire

14. “I am a forgettable leaf on a tree.”

— Gregory Maguire

15. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

16. “I wouldn’t mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don’t know the way out.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

19. “Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today, I wish to hell he’d go away.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

21. “A man is called a traitor, or liberator. A rich man is a theif or philanthropist. Is one a crusader or ruthless invader? It’s all in which label is able to persist.”

— Gregory Maguire

22. “Yes, freedom is magnificent. But freedom is hard work.”

— Gregory Maguire

23. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

24. “I take responsibility only for the future, not the past. The past can’t hurt you the way the future can.”

— Gregory Maguire

25. “Notice, notice; let noticing take the place of screaming.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

27. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

28. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

29. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

30. “So she listened hard. And she began to evolve, because stories work their magic that way. They build conviction and erode conviction in equal measure.”

— Gregory Maguire

31. “We all have our shortcomings, it seems, though some are less visible than others.”

— Gregory Maguire

32. “Death might be the only way forward for someone. Or it might seem so at the time.”

— Gregory Maguire

33. “They moved together, blue diamonds on a green field.”

— Gregory Maguire

34. “Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven. So you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.”

— Gregory Maguire

35. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

36. “The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build.”

— Gregory Maguire

37. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

40. “The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.”

— Gregory Maguire

41. “Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.”

— Gregory Maguire

42. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

43. “If you have an ancestor who is a Benedictine monk, we would rather not know it.”

— Gregory Maguire

44. “You’ll be all right,′ Elphaba said, ‘now you’re a seasoned traveler. This is just the return leg of a voyage you already know.’ She put her face against Glinda’s and kissed her. ‘Hold out, if you can,’ she murmured, and kissed her again. ‘Hold out, my sweet.”

— Gregory Maguire

45. “The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

47. “If you’re ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don’t trust in anything.”

— Gregory Maguire

48. “For fun? Maybe evil is an art form.”

— Gregory Maguire

49. “Come what may and hell to pay.”

— Gregory Maguire

50. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire