Quote

The world rarely shrieks its meaning at you. It whispers, in private languages and obscure modalities, in arcane and quixotic imagery, through symbol systems in which every element has multiple meanings determined by juxtaposition.

Gregory Maguire

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Gregory Maguire
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: June 9
Novelist
Writer
Albany
New York
World
Systems
Meanings
Symbols
Imagery
Determined
Languages
Modalities
Private
Symbol
Shrieks
Elements
Obscure
Quixotic
Meaning
Multiple
Arcane
Language
Element
Juxtaposition
Every
Rarely
Whispers

More quotes by Gregory Maguire

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I like to think Im a pretty good-natured guy and pretty civil and probably not ever truly guilty in any serious way of any legal infractions.
Gregory Maguire
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His avenging angel had come to call him home. A suicide was waiting for him back in his own world, and by now he ought to have learned enough to get through it successfully.
Gregory Maguire
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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
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Notice, notice let noticing take the place of screaming.
Gregory Maguire
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Only he with the hobbled foot fully knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can apprehend what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us.
Gregory Maguire
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In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.
Gregory Maguire
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All our lives are activity without meaning we burrow ratlike into life and we squirm ratlike through it and ratlike we are flung into our graves at the end. Now and then, why shouldn't we hear a voice of prophecy.
Gregory Maguire
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I learned failure early and mastered it.
Gregory Maguire
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I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.
Gregory Maguire
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The answer of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgment.
Gregory Maguire
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Galinda didn't often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not the whole point of conversations was flow.
Gregory Maguire
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We live in our tales of ourselves, she thought, and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls.
Gregory Maguire
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Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.
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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Skibbereen have a hard time at [math] the best that the smartest of them can do with adding two plus two is guessing: three plus one. Correct, sort of, but not always useful.
Gregory Maguire
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No one is exempt from grief.
Gregory Maguire
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Sorrow has a name, and its name is loneliness. Sorrow has a shape, and its shape is absence. Sorrow is a sickness like any other.
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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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
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Her sister's shoes. They sparkeled even in the darkening afternoon. They sparkeled like yellow diamonds, and embers of blood and thorny stars.
Gregory Maguire