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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 matters of slight and offense

Gregory Maguire

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Gregory Maguire
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: June 9
Novelist
Writer
Albany
New York
Matter
Cold
Wins
Men
Dead
Offense
Changed
Cross
Struggle
Crosses
Winning
Requires
Lying
Matters
Vigilance
Universe
Anger
Adjust
Woman
Eternal
Slight

More quotes by Gregory Maguire

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Children are wickeder than adults, they have no sense of restraint.
Gregory Maguire
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Yet who can say how our souls have been stamped by witnessing such a cruel drama? All souls are hostages to their human envelopes, but souls must decay and suffer at such indignity, don't you agree?
Gregory Maguire
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...I dabble in causes and effects.
Gregory Maguire
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...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.
Gregory Maguire
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But his face had that hollow look, as if there was something gone... you know that look. The inward focus. Distantly attentive to the home you're missing, or the someone you're missing. That look that a bird has when it turns it dry reptilian eye on you. That look that doesn't see you because the mind is filled up with someone it would rather see.
Gregory Maguire
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It's the work that's important, not the individual who does it.
Gregory Maguire
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She assumes that skill will guide her fingertips, that shapely lines will uncoil out of the pencil the moment she starts. Surely talent is a thing curled deep inside, just waiting to be exercised, and at the slightest invitation it will stretch, shake itself, make itself known? Talent, it seems, is not so insistent.
Gregory Maguire
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They'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
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Just follow that one road the whole time!... I hope they don't get lost, I'm so bad at giving directions.
Gregory Maguire
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I learned failure early and mastered it.
Gregory Maguire
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Yes, I'm nervous. You'll find in time most people are. They simply learn better how to disguise it, and sometimes, if they're wise, how to use their anxiety to serve the public good.
Gregory Maguire
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The world was floods above and fire below
Gregory Maguire
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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.
Gregory Maguire
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The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.
Gregory Maguire
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Evil is an act, not an appetite. How many haven't wanted to slash the throat of some boor across the dining room table? Present company excepted of course. Everyone has the appetite. If you give in to it, it, that act is evil. The appetite is normal.
Gregory Maguire
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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
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No wonder Wonderland isn't funny to read anymore: We live there full time. We need a break from it.
Gregory Maguire
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I shall pray for your soul,' promised Nessarose. I shall wait for your shoes,' Elphie answered.
Gregory Maguire
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No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.
Gregory Maguire
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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