Top 300 Gregory Maguire Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or defer it.”

— Gregory Maguire

202. “She is no longer I, she is too long ago, she is only she...”

— Gregory Maguire

203. “I mean, evil and boredom. Evil and ennui. Evil and the lack of stimulation. Evil and sluggish blood.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

205. “Perplexity isn’t as noble as conviction, but perhaps more good is done in the name of muddling through uncertainty than is done hacking away with the righteous sword of self-confidence.”

— Gregory Maguire

206. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

207. “Such silly things, children – and so embarrassing – because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. While animals are born who they are, accept it, and that is that. They live with greater peace than people do.”

— Gregory Maguire

208. “No wonder Wonderland isn’t funny to read anymore: We live there full time. We need a break from it.”

— Gregory Maguire

209. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

210. “What good is it being a painter if you can’t paint yourself?”

— Gregory Maguire

211. “Don’t take the advice of anyone you meet here. We’re all mad.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

213. “Only he with the hobbled foot fully knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can apprehend what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us.”

— Gregory Maguire

214. “As an old friend of mine once said when I brought him some interesting brownies, ‘You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes,’” she replied. “Haven’t you read your Maimonides?”

— Gregory Maguire

215. “In the end, all disguises must drop.”

— Gregory Maguire

216. “One doesn’t know, necessarily, when one meets the trip-action person in one’s life. A good teacher, a flirt behind the dry-goods counter, a petty thief wielding a knife. Any one of a thousand chance encounters might be the chance of a lifetime. Or a deathtime.”

— Gregory Maguire

217. “You know our Alice. She plays hide-and-seek but sometimes forgets to ask someone to look for her.”

— Gregory Maguire

218. “In order to remember who you are, you have to have known it in the first place.”

— Gregory Maguire

219. “She added, perhaps to herself, “You have to become old and ugly before anyone listens to you, and then they don’t, because you’re ugly and old.”

— Gregory Maguire

220. “It was hard to tell what her weapons were, except for that sort of inane good sense and emotional honesty.”

— Gregory Maguire

221. “It was deliciously pagan.”

— Gregory Maguire

222. “As for dreams, they are powered by urgent desire, even if that desire is only to escape the quotidian.”

— Gregory Maguire

223. “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.”

— Gregory Maguire

224. “Perhaps he just didn’t have the feeling for faith. It seemed to be a kind of language, one whose gnarled syntax needed to be heard from birth, or it remained forever unintelligible. But he wished he had a faith now, some scrap for something: for elphaba was dead, and to act as if the world were no more changed than if some branch of a tree had snapped off- well, it didn’t seem right.”

— Gregory Maguire

225. “Behind every aspect of the world is another aspect of the world.”

— Gregory Maguire

226. “Growth and change were viewed as reactions to conditions met.”

— Gregory Maguire

227. “When Sister Saint Aelphaba neither confirmed nor denied this plan, Oatsie began to understand why the payment to take the green maunt away had been more than generous.”

— Gregory Maguire

228. “The fatal day rarely announces itself, but comes disguised as midsummer. Our private lives are like a colony of worlds expanding, contracting, breathing universal air into separate knowledges. Or like several packs of cards shuffled together by an expert anonymous hand, and dealt out in a random, amused or even hostile way.”

— Gregory Maguire

229. “Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.”

— Gregory Maguire

230. “I learned to fly on a broom,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “I can learn to milk a goat, I bet.” Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found.”

— Gregory Maguire

231. “All of life hinges on what one does next, until finally one makes the wrong choice.”

— Gregory Maguire

232. “Happy endings are still endings.”

— Gregory Maguire

233. “Not an ugly color, Nanny thought. Just not a human color.”

— Gregory Maguire

234. “They conducted their love affair in the room above the abandoned corn exchange as the autumn weather came lop-leggedly in from the east: now a warm day, now a sunny one, now four days of cold winds and thin rain.”

— Gregory Maguire

235. “Children talk themselves out of their convictions as they grow up and become distracted by their huge selfish selves. All the literature is consistent on this point. Children begin to think they’ve imagined us.”

— Gregory Maguire

236. “Happiness now sometimes meant turning away from what one remembered of earlier, better happiness.”

— Gregory Maguire

237. “The moon passed overhead in its path from the Vinkus, and she felt its accusatory spotlight, and moved back from the tall windows.”

— Gregory Maguire

238. “She found her regard for Mr. Winter turning to something like suspicion – though notice how often we lower suspicion upon others to avoid putting ourselves under scrutiny. Now.”

— Gregory Maguire

239. “Ah, the inner eye blinks, and the spirit trembles, at the dangerous cost of seeing one’s self as one is.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

241. “There were more ways to live than the ones given by one’s superiors.”

— Gregory Maguire

242. “The alien girl – she called herself Dorothy – was by virtue of her survival elevated to living sainthood. The dog was merely annoying.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

244. “He spoke in one of the American accents; Lydia couldn’t distinguish among them. To her they all sounded dry and tinny. Almost quack-like.”

— Gregory Maguire

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

— Gregory Maguire

246. “Winter still comes after autumn though you may have died over the summer.”

— Gregory Maguire

247. “It seems there is no shortage of regret among the young – but then, they are young, they make mistakes. They have time to correct them and the courage to admit their failings aloud.”

— Gregory Maguire

248. “What more does one ask of life, really, but to stagger from moment to moment with a reason to wake and wait for the next reason to wake?”

— Gregory Maguire

249. “No doubt Noah offered his wife that olive branch. Forty days in a boat with those animals to clean up after? A peace offering likely all that stood between their marriage and bloody murder.”

— Gregory Maguire

250. “One never knows how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her – is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is the very least question of definitions.”

— Gregory Maguire