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21ede7f
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It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.
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goodness
evil
good
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Gregory Maguire |
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e3f6711
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The world was floods above and fire below
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philosophy
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Gregory Maguire |
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b5be2e4
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Was it an accident that I saw Fiyero, I wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes, or is it just that world unwraps itself to you again and again as soon as you are ready to see it anew?
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Gregory Maguire |
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dbacf9f
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Ah, the inner eye blinks, and the spirit trembles, at the dangerous cost of seeing one's self as one is.
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Gregory Maguire |
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824ed85
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Are you the dart?" he said. "Are you the knife? The fuse?" She said (though he wasn't convinced): "My deane, my poppet, I am too green to walk into a public place and do something bad..."
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Gregory Maguire |
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da767ad
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She would emerge. She always had before. The punishing political climate of Oz had beat her down, dried her up, tossed her away--like a seedling she had drifted, apparently too desiccated ever to take root. But surely the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a twisted life, hadn't it also made her capable?
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Gregory Maguire |
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2103f6d
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How could anyone live without flying?
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Gregory Maguire |
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6163063
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Is this the main thing that painters of portraits care about? The person on the verge of becoming someone else?
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Gregory Maguire |
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b51a9c5
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No," she cried, "no, no, I'm not a harem, I'm not a woman, I'm not a person, no."
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Gregory Maguire |
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671bd75
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A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives. They woke up, were they lucky enough to have consciousness, in the act of doing something they already knew how to do...
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Gregory Maguire |
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0660e33
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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.
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Gregory Maguire |
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56f28f9
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This is what fun is like," said Rain, almost to herself."
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rain
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Gregory Maguire |
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780f553
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The real thing about evil... you figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret.
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humanity
secrets
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Gregory Maguire |
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ec007b7
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A capacity for interiority in the growing adult is threatened by the temptation to squander that capacity ruthlessly, to revel in hollowness. The syndrome especially plagues anyone who lives behind a mask...A hundred ways to duck the question: how will I live with myself now that I know what I know?
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Gregory Maguire |
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60a80e0
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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.
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Gregory Maguire |
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afa5891
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And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.
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Gregory Maguire |
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e7eb962
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the reasons just reassemble themselves in different patterns every time I think about it.
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Gregory Maguire |
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72997a8
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Under every roof, a story, just as behind every brow, a history
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story
tale
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Gregory Maguire |
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c2f4de3
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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...
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story
storytelling
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Gregory Maguire |
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d5018ab
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You can endure any sort of prison if you can apprehend a window in the dark.
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Gregory Maguire |
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639ea80
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What is strange is that we may remember what we have done, but not always why we did it.
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motives
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Gregory Maguire |
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9f41ea4
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It was mild monsters like these that made Jack the Ripper go after young women, she decided: who could tolerate yielding the world to someone who behaved as if she had given birth to the very world herself?
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center-of-the-universe
children
humor
jack-the-ripper
the-world
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Gregory Maguire |
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a6bff7a
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I learned to fly on a broom," he said, rolling up his sleeves. "I can learn to milk a goat, I bet." Though flying on a broom proved to be the easier task, he found."
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Gregory Maguire |
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bfee091
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To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or defer it.
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Gregory Maguire |
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7191951
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Only he with the hobbled foot knows the beauty of running. Only he with the severed ear can appreciate what the sweetest music must sound like. Our ailments complete us. That we in our sinful souls can ever imagine charity- 'She can't go on for a moment. 'We may not always be able to practice charity, but that in this world we can even imagine it at all! That act of daring requires the greatest challenge,
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Gregory Maguire |
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70606cb
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No one is exempt from grief.
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Gregory Maguire |
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d62f9f8
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When the dawn light is coursing through the slats in the shutters at last, making thin stripes on the floor, she, tossing, decides that for every human soul there must surely be a possible childhood worth living, but once it slips by, there isn't any reclaiming it or revising it.
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Gregory Maguire |
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89f15bf
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How easily Neverland is corrupted into the deserted island of . How quickly Tinkerbell regresses to being one of the flies pestering the gouged eye sockets of the pig that the lost boys butcher.
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Gregory Maguire |
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475771d
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Glinda used her glitter beads, and you used your exotic looks and background, but weren't you just doing the same thing, trying to maximize what you had in order to get what you wanted? People who claim that they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It's people who claim that they're good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.
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Gregory Maguire |
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757b322
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after discussion about what evil is, a question asked to Elphaba on why she killed Madame Morrible] "Why did you do it?" asked the hostess with spirit. The Witch shrugged. "For fun? Maybe evil is an art form."
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Gregory Maguire |
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435b3d0
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Are you an aberration to your species?' she cried. 'Cats don't look for approval!
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cats
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Gregory Maguire |
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bcfd474
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Is there a relative value of beauty? Is evanescence - fleetingness - a necessary element of the thing that most moves us? A shooting star dazzles more than the sun. A child captivates like an elf, but grows into grossness, an ogre, a harpy. A flower splays itself into color - the lilies of the field! - more treasured than any painting of a flower. But of all these things, women's grace, shooting stars, flowers, and paintings, only a paintin..
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Gregory Maguire |
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d821179
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When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity.
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Gregory Maguire |
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a712bbe
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It's the age of daring. It's the only time we have. We must live in the present. We are young and alive.
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Gregory Maguire |
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83958e4
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Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing -- by dint of ignorance and innocence -- that beneath this unbearable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way.
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dorothy
hope
ignorance
innocence
philosophy
wicked
witch
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Gregory Maguire |
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a717ce0
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Men were beasts. Everyone knew that.
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Gregory Maguire |
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2bf4f15
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I'm not involved in shame. Morals are learned in childhood, and I didn't have any such holiday called childhood.
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Gregory Maguire |
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baf01e3
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We live in our tales of ourselves. . . and ignore as best we can the contradictions, and the lapses, and the abrasions of plot against our mortal souls. . .
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Gregory Maguire |
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3c8f083
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I have the distinct feeling I'm not in Oz anymore,' said Brrr.
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Gregory Maguire |
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79b55cb
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They had ganged up on her, in the claustrophobic, loving way of families, and she wanted no more of it.
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Gregory Maguire |
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dc9afcc
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YOU HAVE YOUR OWN LIFE TO LIVE, IRIS, AND AT ITS END, THE ONLY OPINION THAT AMOUNTS TO ANYTHING IS THAT WHICH GOD BESTOWS.
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Gregory Maguire |
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d3d6217
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At its most elemental, a spell is no more than a recipe for change.
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Gregory Maguire |
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3508352
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And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.
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life
|
Gregory Maguire |
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a83e3c6
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Forgive us our trespasses," says Margarethe, "and get out of our way."
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Gregory Maguire |