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Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire Quotes

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Famous Gregory Maguire Quotes

“You plant two sunflower seeds in a pot of rich soil. You water them with the same can, at the same time, with the same portions. You rotate the pot daily so they get equal access to the sunlight. Yet on some early, pertinent day, perhaps there is a cloud across the sky, and the plant on the left doesn’t get quite the strength of light that the one on the right does. Or there is a worm in the soil in one quadrant of the pot who eats through more of these roots here than those ones there. Who can say. Sisters are not flowers. And parents can never, from the first day, give the same water and light and soil to one girl that they gave to her sister. Sisters grow, if they grow together at all, in adjacent sorrow.”

Sisters
Book:Elphie: A Wicked Childhood
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“Woe is the natural end of life, yet we go on having babies.No, said Nanny, an echo in Melena's mind (and editorializing as usual): No, no, you pretty little pampered hussy. We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it--we're slow learners, we women--we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production.But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death.Ah, we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can't learn at all.”

MenWomenBabies
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“"This is why you shouldn't fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction [...] The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness," [Elphaba] said."And of women?""Women are weaker, but their weakness is full of cunning and an equally rigid moral certainty. Since their arena is smaller, their capacity for real damage is less alarming. Though being more intimate they are the more treacherous."”

MenLoveWomenWeakness
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“Tribal mothers always tell their children that there are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It's a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex, too. [...] And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It's the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross 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 manners of slight and offense.”

MenWomenCold AngerHot Anger
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi 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? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”

Evil
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“"But maybe there's something to what you say," said Elphaba. "I mean, evil and boredom. Evil and ennui. Evil and the lack of stimulation. Evil and sluggish blood.""You're writing a poem, it sounds like. Why ever would a girl be interested in evil?""I'm not interested in it. It's just what the early sermons are all on about. So I'm thinking about what they're thinking about, that's all. Sometimes they talk about diet and not eating Animals, and then I think of that. I just like to think about what I'm reading. Don't you?""I don't read very well. So I don't think I think very well either." Galinda smiled. "I dress to kill, though."”

ThinkingEvilReadingDressing
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“I have always felt like a pawn... My skin color's been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that.”

DestinyFateFree WillBad Luck
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.”

YoungFictionBeautyYouthSmartSelfishnessWickedMaguire
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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“The human mind-we have come to observe-tricks out distinctions in principles of oposition. A man more foul will likely be less benign. A woman with a greedy belly may also be mean with her widow's might. The way a man slakes his thirst and a woman slakes her thirst are not identical, for they thirst for different things. Perhaps this is why humans rely on the mirror, to get beyond the simple me-you, handsome-hideous, menacing-merciful. In a mirror, humans see that the one is also also them: the two are the same, one one. The menace accompanies the mercy. The transcendent cohabits with the corrupt. What stirring lives humans have managed to live, knowing this of themselves! And so we have made a mirror, and in our foolishness lost it, and the one who set out to reclaim it had never returned. Back into our unexamined selves we slunk, until she arrived at our door. (140)”

MercyCorruptMirrorMenace
Book:Mirror Mirror
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“The other thing Elphie finds out, perhaps as important, is that knowledge comes to her without it needing to know what she looks like. Knowledge doesn't care about that. And in erecting for herself this tentative scaffolding of new skills, she discovers that she's losing her ability, or her need, to squirm with that awkward sense of not-right-ness, not-enoughness...The answer establishes itself despite her.”

KnowledgeSelf AcceptanceStudent
Book:Elphie: A Wicked Childhood
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“We don't go on having babies, that's quite apparent. We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it - we're slow learners, we women - we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production. But men don't dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah we're slow learners, Nanny countered. But *they* can't learn at all.”

Men And WomenBabies
Book:Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
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