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Quote by Gregory Maguire

“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.”

Quote by Gregory Maguire

Work

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

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Author

Gregory Maguire
Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire is an American novelist known for his reinterpretation of classic fairy tales. His works are characterized by profound moral implications and rich imagination, which have won him a wide audience. more

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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.”

“There were special words for me, lurking on the horizon, prepackaged to mark the possible future stages of my existence. I might become a spinster. I might become a crone. I might be a babe or a MILF or ‚childless‘. My brothers, no matter what else might befall them, would remain men. And in the end of it all, if I was lucky, I would become that most piteous of things, an old lady, whom I already understood was a figure everybody felt free to patronize, even children.”

“Organizations are set up by and large to support an ideal type of worker, what I call a prototype, to succeed. And research consistently has shown even across geographies, and across different cultures, that this is by and large a man. So, this tends to be somebody, you know, when we think of a manager, we think of somebody that’s male, but not only that, but they tend to have sort of masculine attributes. So, white, middle class, heterosexual, sort of able-bodied male. But importantly it’s also someone that’s willing to engage in sort of dominant, assertive, aggressive, competitive, exclusionary behaviors to get ahead. And they are willing also to make work the number one priority, so that means it’s also somebody that’s free from dependent care responsibilities. The problem with prototypes is people who tend to succeed in organizations are people who best fit the prototype. You fit in almost by default, you walk in, and it’s easier for you to access networks, it’s easier for you to be sponsored, it’s easier for people to see you as a leader just simply because you match in their mind what good looks like when it comes to leadership. But the reverse is also true. So, the more ways that you differ from this ideal standard, the more challenges you’re going to experience trying to advance at work. And this is true for both men and women, which is a really important point to make. The barriers are not just something that women experience, men also experience challenges to that. And so, what the system has got wrong is that since the beginning of time, since organizations have been around, they’ve pretty much been hardwired with this ideal standard in mind. In many ways, what we’re rarely getting right, or rarely trying to fix around the system, is how we value difference. So, can we create an environment where different types of individuals can succeed.”

“The more you learn, the more you want to learn.”

“Tackling inequality is actually every leader's job, it is the definition of leadership. And it’s also the ultimate privilege. So, to be able to remove barriers that you yourself never have to experience is the ultimate form of privilege, and it’s actually a requirement of every leader. Because if you want to advance women in your workplace, you cannot do that without knowing what the barriers are, and taking steps to remove them. So, by and large leaders just simply haven’t been leading when it comes to equality in workplaces, so we need them to lead, it’s an imperative in terms of advancing women, and also advancing men and creating environments where men can show up differently.”