“Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“A male usually had made up his mind before you began to talk to him -so why bother?- but a female, because her mind was more supple, was always prepared to become more disappointed in you than she had yet suspected possible.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance; some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“He knew about being alone. The weather was always cold there.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Just my luck, if I believed in luck. I only believe in the opposite of luck, whatever that is.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing they hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Children played at those stories; they dreamed about them. They took them to heart and acted as if to live inside them.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Your transparency is just another one of your disguises, isn't it?”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“The future reshapes the memory of the past in the way it recalibrates significance: some episodes are advanced, others lose purchase.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“I have the distinct feeling I'm not in Oz anymore,' said Brrr.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“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, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Men were beasts. Everyone knew that.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“I'm not involved in shame. Morals are learned in childhood, and I didn't have any such holiday called childhood.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“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. . .”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Are you an aberration to your species?' she cried. 'Cats don't look for approval!”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“He was not so lucky. He hadn't yet had enough experience with humans to know that the thing the hold dearest to their hearts, the last thing they relinquish when all else is fading, is the consoling belief in the inferiority of others.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“He didn’t remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“When you can't die, she thought, everything sounds like a clock ticking.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“The circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again.
Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“The unvisited grannies, in stone houses by the wheat field, can't remember their husbands or children. They worry their hands, though, hands that could do with a rinsing. The grannies think:
We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn't as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“I was quite a looker in my time," she said. Was she reading his mind, or only being smart, to know she must be hideous?
"Oh, had they invented time as long ago as that?”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“What goes unnamed remains hard to correct.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“But this was fancy; she was succumbing to fancy in a way she hadn't done before.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
Gregory Maguire
Born place: in Albany, New York, The United States
Born date June 9, 1954
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“I worry about setting myself up to fail, about letting people down. If I don’t try for a better life, then I don’t have to worry about disappointing anybody. […] You’d be disappointing yourself, though, wouldn’t you, by not taking the chance?”
― quote from Shades of Gray
“But what of the little question of your secret, Lady Archer?"
"Will remain so if you're a pile of ash on my floor.”
― Kristen Callihan, quote from Firelight
“It is hard to follow one great vision in this world of darkness and of many changing shadows. Among those men get lost.”
― Black Elk, quote from Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
“Just because I cut a lark with that stiff-rumped Exciseman you seem to think I'm as good as rope-ripe!”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from The Unknown Ajax
“Clue in, Ally,” he immediately volleyed, “Watchin’ the Rock Chicks, I know exactly what does and does not fly with you, and just like every one of those men when their women serves up attitude, I don’t give a shit. And, just sayin’, that attitude, just like with them, is why I’m with you.”
“What?” I bit out.
“Babe, every one of those guys had pussy lined up at the door. Bitches were gagging for it. They’d do anything to get their hooks into those men and those men knew it. They didn’t want a woman who’d do anything. They wanted a woman who knew her own mind and wouldn’t do anything. Not a single one of your posse lets their man walk all over them. And not a single one lets them get away with shit. At least not without dishin’ up a fair amount of attitude before they let them get away with it which is the definition of not letting them get away with it.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Rock Chick Revolution
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Charlotte StreetBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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