Being born with a talent or an inclination for goodness is the aberration.
And so the feast-day of the nativity of the Christ Child approached with its usual panic, uproar, and greed.
And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the side stepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will n...
After all, what kind of a life is it that is not pestered by insects? A perfect one, and since life is not perfect, this cannot be life.
A story in a book has its own intentions, even if unknowable to the virgin reader, who just lollops along at her own pace regardless of the author’s strategies, and gets where she will. After all, a b...
A plot, whether abandoned by a reader or pursued rapturously, remains itself, and gets where it is headed even if nobody is looking.
A notion of character, not so much discredited as simply forgotten, once held that people only came into themselves partway through their lives.
A little bird told me, said the Lion.
. . this girl who seemed, increasingly, to be interested in learning to read everything except how human beings talked to one another.
Once you outgrow that fetching habit of faith you will display a ferocious authority.
In a people whose moral code is so lax, so little is wrong.
[after discussion about what evil is, a question asked to Elphaba on why she killed Madame Morrible]Why did you do it? asked the hostess with spirit.The Witch shrugged. For fun? Maybe evil is an art f...
You’re in the finest hands. He’s a very capable soldier. He is an old man with a white beard. He is a young man inside, and strong.
Your life story is really about how the hands of history caught you up, played with you, and you with them. History plays for keeps; individuals play for time. When
Your life and times don’t drain of meaning because they become more contradictory, ornamented by paradox, inexplicable. Rather the opposite, maybe. The less explicable, the more meaning. The less like...
You might forget an event but you can never go back to living as you did before it's influence was applied upon you
You lie, cheat and steal and call it courtesy, cunning and thrift.
You could say that Elphaba brought us together,' said Boq softly. 'I'm closer to her and so I'm closer to you.'Galinda seemed to give up. She leaned her head back on the velvet cushions of the swing a...
Where I'm from, we believe in all sorts of things that aren't true... we call it history.
When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies.