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

“He snagged two more pieces of wood from her load for good measure. "Martise, bearing children is woman's work. Gurn and I would be sitting in the dark every night if we waited for some wandering female to pick up sticks for us.”
― Grace Draven, quote from Master of Crows


“We find that a high plane of sustained horror is often convenient for reasons of state." — Inspector Kraus (Gestapo)”
― Jan Valtin, quote from Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs alias Jan Valtin


“Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead...”
― Og Mandino, quote from The Greatest Miracle in the World


“When people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Audio CD)


“Solitude is not the absence of company, but the moment when our soul is free to speak to us and help us decide what to do with our life.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Akras manuskripts


Interesting books

About That Night
(20.3K)
About That Night
by Julie James
The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
(7.3K)
The Secret Wisdom of...
by Christopher Scotton
Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
(16.4K)
Very Good Lives: The...
by J.K. Rowling
Moonlight on Nightingale Way
(12.5K)
Moonlight on Nightin...
by Samantha Young
There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
(237)
There Are Men Too Ge...
by James Kavanaugh
Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It
(7.9K)
Why Men Don't Listen...
by Allan Pease

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.