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

— Gregory Maguire

Was it an accident... or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?

— Gregory Maguire

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

Well, I learned to cook. At my age," she told him. "What's next? Art therapy? Anyway, I've had quite a time of it this summer, and who knows what eases down on any road. Come, Rain. A quick goodbye, and off you go." "Goodbye," said Rain to the Lion, and then to the woman. "Not to them," said Linda, "To me." She turned eyes that were saucer upon Linda. "Mum?

— Gregory Maguire

We only have babies when we're young enough not to know how grim life turns out.

— Gregory Maguire

We only have babies when we’re young enough not to know how grim life turns out.

— Gregory Maguire

What a mystery we are to ourselves, even as we go on, learning more, sorting it out a little. The further on we go, the more meaning there is but the less articulate. You live your life, and the older you get – the more specificity you harvest – the more precious becomes every ounce and spam. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. Rather the opposite, maybe. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).

— Gregory Maguire

What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trim - was Lair's sense of him? A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trim lived in Lair's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress billiards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trim's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing.

— Gregory Maguire

What is strange is that we may remember what we have done, but not always why we did it.

— Gregory Maguire

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