The collection / 117 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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02c. 1954 AD

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.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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03c. 1954 AD

The world was floods above and fire below

Gregory Maguire / quote

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04c. 1954 AD

Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance and innocence -- that beneath this unbearable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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05c. 1954 AD

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 / quote

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06c. 1954 AD

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 / quote

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07c. 1954 AD

I care as much as I can, but I don’t spend energy caring about things I cannot resolve.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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08c. 1954 AD

But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him "Yero, my hero," and that melted his heart.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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09c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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10c. 1954 AD

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.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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11c. 1954 AD

(from the short story The Honorary Shepherds)...you can't be kicked out of a faith. Faith starts inside your heart and ends up in eternity. All you can be kicked out of is a building, which is the bus stop of faith, sort of, and what's a building?

Gregory Maguire / quote

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12c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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13c. 1954 AD

He had thought love as a policy made a lot of sense for those who could manage it, and anyone who could manage it belonged in religious life. The rest of us have to struggle with more ordinary love, the common or garden variety: love as a crippling condition. Love as a syndrome.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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14c. 1954 AD

Of course. You get everything from books.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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15c. 1954 AD

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.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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16c. 1954 AD

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 parents on our backs. And we're in charge, while the figures who used to command our respect are wasting away.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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17c. 1954 AD

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?

Gregory Maguire / quote

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18c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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19c. 1954 AD

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 nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

Gregory Maguire / quote

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20c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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21c. 1954 AD

Night-time is being 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

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22c. 1954 AD

O beautiful, to make escapeAnd leave this world behind.Had I to stay another dayI'd lose my fucking mind!

Gregory Maguire / quote

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23c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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24c. 1954 AD

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

Gregory Maguire / quote

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