"People who claim they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of. "
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"The body apologizes to the soul for its errors, and the soul asks forgiveness for squatting in the body without invitation."
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"She dropped her shyness like a nightgown, and in the liquid glare of sunlight on old boards she held up her hands-as if, in the terror of the upcoming skirmish, she had at last understood that she was beautiful. In her own way."
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle"
— Gregory Maguire (Son of a Witch: A Novel)

"Happy endings are still endings."
— Gregory Maguire (Son of a Witch: A Novel)

"There were more ways to live than the ones given by one's superiors"
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny."
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"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 never back down,ever, ever. "
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"In the lives of children, pumpkins turn into coaches, mice and rats turn into men. When we grow up, we realize it is far more common for men to turn into rats."
— Gregory Maguire (Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister)

"One always has a better book in one's mind than one can manage to get onto paper."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"There is just this for consolation: an hour here or there, when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined , though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"Dear Leonard. To look life in the face. Always to look life in the face and to know it for what it is. At last to know it. To love it for what it is, and then, to put it away. Leonard. Always the years between us. Always the years. Always the love. Always the hours."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

". . . he felt himself entering a moment so real he could only run toward it, shouting."
— Michael Cunningham (Flesh And Blood)

"What I wanted to do seemed simple. I wanted something alive and shocking enough that it could be a morning in somebody's life. The most ordinary morning. Imagine, trying to do that."
— Michael Cunningham (The Hours)

"If you care about something you have to protect it – If you’re lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it."
— John Irving (A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"I never change, I simply become more myself."
— Joyce Carol Oates

"To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable."
— Virginia Woolf

"The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks."
— Tennessee Williams

"Get busy living or get busy dying."
— Stephen King (Shawshank Redemption)

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable.
- Wizard"
— L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

"'You have some queer friends, Dorothy,' she said.

'The queerness doesn't matter, so long as they're friends,' was the answer"
— L. Frank Baum (The Road to Oz)

"The road to hell is paved with adverbs."
— Stephen King