Quotes from Out of Oz

“I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Maybe that's what growing up means, in the end - you go far enough in the direction of - somewhere - and you realise that you've neutered the capacity of the term home to mean anything. [...] We don't get an endless number of orbits away from the place where meaning first arises, that treasure-house of first experiences. What we learn, instead, is that our adventures secure us in our isolation. Experience revokes our licence to return to simpler times. Sooner or later, there's no place remotely like home.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“They'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone's horizon sweeps someone else's. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Of course. You get everything from books.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Don't wish,"said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“She wasn't afraid of doing good or of resisting evil. She was merely afraid she might not be able to tell the difference.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time to time, unbidden and often upsetting. From the sandy smell of his sandy hair to the locked grip of his muscles as they had wrestled in sensuous aggression - unwelcome nostalgia. Trism lived in Liir's heart like a full suit of clothes in a wardrobe, dress habillards maybe, hollow and real at once. The involuntary memory of the best of Trism's glinting virtues sometimes kicked up unquietable spasms of longing.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“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.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“The further on we go, the more meaning there is, but the less articulable. You live your life and the older you get- the more specifically you harvest- the more precious becomes every ounce and spasm. Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like a mathematics equation (a sum game); the more like music (significant secret).”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“The sweet accident of coincidence is the best foundation on which to build.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“O beautiful, to make escape
And leave this world behind.
Had I to stay another day
I'd lose my fucking mind...”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“When you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even it it's a moronic proclamation ... Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“[Puggles] "What population signs on willingly for slavery?"

"You mean other than wives?" [Glinda]”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“It appears history is going to keep happening, despite our hopes for retirement.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“This is what fun is like," said Rain, almost to herself.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Every choice brings wisdom in its wake. If you got to have the wisdom first, it wouldn't be a choice--just policy”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“As years pass, and the abundance of the future is depleted, the crux of old mistakes and the cost of old choices are ever recalibrated. Resentment, the interest in umbrage derived from being wronged, is computed minute by minute, savagely, however you try to ignore it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“I never talk about the end game." He winked at her. "I've lived so long without death that I've stopped believing in it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“...Where shall I say you've gone?"
She threw an arm about airily. "Oh, way up high. Over the rainbow somewhere, I guess.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Is that, in the end - that capacity to hurt - the most essential ingredient for a ruler?”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“Everyone has a right to love the land that gave them the things they need to live. It gives them beauty to look at, and food to eat, and neighbors to bicker with and then eventually to marry. But I think... that your own devotion to your familiar homeland should inspire you to allow other people to embrace their homelands as beautiful too.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“In her time Nor Tigelaar had faced insurrectionists and collaborationists and war profiteers. She'd endured abduction and prison and self-mutilation. She'd sold herself in sex not for cash but for military information that might come in handy to the resistance, and in so doing she'd come across a rum variety of human types.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“. . . this girl who seemed, increasingly, to be interested in learning to read everything except how human beings talked to one another.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“My job is to protect you, Lady Glinda even if you are loosing your mind.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

“The mister days that letters are the key, but even when you know the whole family, there's so many combinations you can make. And they break their word.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Out of Oz

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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.