Literary Birthday – 9 June – Gregory Maguire

Gregory Maguire Quotes

1. Books fall open, you fall in. When you climb out again, you’re a bit larger than you used to be.
2. 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 any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.
3. Happy endings are still endings.
4. In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realise it is far more common for men to turn into rats.
5. Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.
6. I’m not a writer because I want to make money. I’m a writer because I’m a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.
7. The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.
8. I never write a book unless I can’t help it. Something has to bother me, like a mosquito, until I have to do something to relieve the itch.
9. Where I’m from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren’t true… we call it history.
10. Approval is overrated…Approval and disapproval alike satisfy those who deliver it more than those who receive it. I don’t care for approval, and I don’t mind doing without.
11. 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.
12. It’s the work that’s important, not the individual who does it.

Gregory Maguire is an American novelist. Many of Maguire’s adult novels are inspired by classic children’s stories. He is the author of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. Wicked, published in 1995, was his first novel for adults. It was adapted into a popular Broadway musical in 2003, which was later adapted into a two-part musical film series with the first film released in 2024 and the second film released in 2025.

Source for image: Author’s website press photos ©2008 Andy Newman

by Amanda Patterson
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