Quotes from Mirror Mirror

Gregory Maguire ·  280 pages

Rating: (28.1K votes)


“The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Even God used silence as a strategy.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror



“I believe in the floor. I put it in place and I walk on it. Faith is a floor. If you don't work at making it for yourself, you have nothing to walk on.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“He had forgotten how convincing the world could look, how sure of itself: its outlines and edges; it's gradations, recessions, protrusions; it's startling and vulgar colors.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“What more does one ask of life, really, but to stagger from moment to moment with a reason to wake and wait for the next reason to wake?”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“But there was the mirror in which I would glimpse his handsome form, because mirrors don't lie about men, only women.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror



“Happiness now sometimes meant turning away from what one remembered of earlier, better happiness.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Please, I know nothing of the world, except my father is lost in it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“I’m a priest, I know better than most when a lie is permitted.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror



“The years peeled slowly off, one by one, or perhaps dozens at a time.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective. Even a bowed mirror works primarily by engaging the eyes, and she who centers herself in its surface is unlikely to notice anyone in the background who lacks a certain status, distinction.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


“Hello, this is I, and these are my arms and legs, which are useful, and this inconvenient hump is my sorrow, which is less than useful, but I've learned how to hump it around, so pay it no mind.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror


About the author

Gregory Maguire
Born place: in Albany, New York, The United States
Born date June 9, 1954
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Can I tell you one thing?” Melonhead says.
I swallow. “Sure.”
“One day isn’t your whole life, Murph.” He waits until I look at him. “A day is just a day.”
I scoff and slouch in the chair. “So what are you saying? That people shouldn’t judge me on one mistake? Tell that to Judge Ororos.”
He leans in against the table. “No, kid. I’m saying you shouldn’t judge yourself for it.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost


“I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Alkimist


“It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.”
― Robert Hughes, quote from The Shock of the New


“Among the words first found in Shakespeare are abstemious, antipathy, critical, frugal, dwindle, extract, horrid, vast, hereditary, critical, excellent, eventful, barefaced, assassination, lonely, leapfrog, indistinguishable, well-read, zany, and countless others (including countless).”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Shakespeare: The World as Stage


“Nature doesn’t know the concept of philosophy, Geralt of Rivia. The pathetic – ridiculous – attempts which people undertake to try to understand nature are typically termed philosophy. The results of such attempts are also considered philosophy.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Time of Contempt


Interesting books

Will ti presento Will
(277.6K)
Will ti presento Wil...
by John Green
Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success
(13.9K)
Give and Take: A Rev...
by Adam M. Grant
Stitching Snow
(6.8K)
Stitching Snow
by R.C. Lewis
Mondays with My Old Pastor: Sometimes All We Need Is a Reminder from Someone Who Has Walked Before Us
(140)
The World Peace Diet
(861)
The World Peace Diet
by Will Tuttle
The Story of Awkward
(2.8K)
The Story of Awkward
by R.K. Ryals

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters 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.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.