Do good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?

— Gregory Maguire

Dona™t let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if Ital™s a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly, but I know how to read, and that™s almost the same thing.

— Gregory Maguire

Don’t let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it’s a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly, but I know how to read, and that’s almost the same thing.

— Gregory Maguire

Don't wish,"said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...

— Gregory Maguire

Do you expect to learn anything at Ship?” he asked. “I have already learned not to speak to strangers.” “Then I will introduce myself, and we will be strangers no longer. I am Diamond.” “I am disinclined to know you.

— Gregory Maguire

Everyone has a right to love the land that gave them the things they need to live. It gives them beauty to look at, and food to eat, and neighbors to bicker with and then eventually to marry. But I think... that your own devotion to your familiar homeland should inspire you to allow other people to embrace their homelands as beautiful too.

— Gregory Maguire

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

For who was in thrall to whom, really? And could it ever be known? Each agent working in collusion and antagonism - like the cold and the sun alike creating a deadly spear of ice... Who is in thrall to whom? And while you wait to learn, the deadly icicle, formed by all opposing forces, falls and drives its cold nail into penetrable flesh.

— Gregory Maguire

(from the short story The Honorary Shepherds)...you can't be kicked out of a faith. Faith starts inside your heart and ends up in eternity. All you can be kicked out of is a building, which is the bus stop of faith, sort of, and what's a building?

— Gregory Maguire

Galindo 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 Ship because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.

— Gregory Maguire