01c. 1954 ADCross 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 all matters of slight and offenseGregory Maguire / quote ↗
03c. 1954 ADI do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral," said the Wizard. "In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
04c. 1954 ADTo the grim poor there need be no pourquoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns 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...?Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
05c. 1954 ADAs the first hard drops of rain fell, the Witch caught sight, not of the girl's face, but of the shoes. Her sister's shoes. They sparkled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood, and thorny stars.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
06c. 1954 ADThey'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
07c. 1954 ADOh, mercy, there is nothing monstrously ugly about you. Ruth may be unpleasing, but you are merely plain. If anything, it's my beauty that's monstrous, for it sweeps away any other aspect of my character.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
08c. 1954 ADAnd that would be my method of locomotion, the Lion concluded. Not diplomas earned, but friendships bungled. Campaigns aborted. Errors in judgment and public humiliations.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
09c. 1954 ADYou leave home, I have learned, counting the trip day by day. If you ever get to return, you count the trip miracle by miracle.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
10c. 1954 ADDo good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
11c. 1954 ADThe circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again. Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
12c. 1954 ADWas it an accident... or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
13c. 1954 ADEveryone has a right to love the land that gave them the things they need to live. It gives them beauty to look at, and food to eat, and neighbors to bicker with and then eventually to marry. But I think... that your own devotion to your familiar homeland should inspire you to allow other people to embrace their homelands as beautiful too.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
14c. 1954 ADPerhaps, thought Nanny, little green Elphaba chose her own sex, and her own color, and to hell with her parents.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
15c. 1954 ADWhen the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn’t any reclaiming it or revising it.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
16c. 1954 ADBy so giving up, of course, it renews itself- that is the secretGregory Maguire / quote ↗
17c. 1954 ADIsn't that funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity linger--Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
18c. 1954 ADI 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 / quote ↗
19c. 1954 ADBecause no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
20c. 1954 ADWe only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
21c. 1954 ADNight is brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
22c. 1954 ADDo you expect to learn anything at Shiz?” he asked. “I have already learned not to speak to strangers.” “Then I will introduce myself and we will be strangers no longer. I am Dillamond.” “I am disinclined to know you.Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
23c. 1954 ADAre you an aberration to your species?' she cried. 'Cats don't look for approval!Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
24c. 1954 ADYou need my help? What for? Bread, cash, a fake identity to help you slip sideways through the cracks? Tell me what you need, tell me why I should help, and I'll see what I can do. In memory of Elphaba. You knew her." Her head titled again, but up, this time, and it was to keep the sudden wetness from spilling into her carefully colored false eyelashes. "You knew my Elphie!Gregory Maguire / quote ↗
