Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years, #1)

by Gregory Maguire

Elphaba picked up the fish and threw it on the ground.

Well that’s not poetry, that’s propaganda, and it’s not even good propaganda at that.”

Fuck your irrigation theory when the pubs are open,”

literally

queered his exams!

It often is,” said Boq. “Especially in the shower. You feel like an underdone—”

what the hell are you talking about

(a thin white ribbon around the crown of his head, pulling his hair straight from the nub, so that it burst into curls beneath, like froth exploding from an overturned basin of milk).

can't visualize this

all his eggs in one basket.

how quaint

Boq was learning so much about girls!

He felt a surge of possibility, an inclination to rub his lips on the place where her shoulder became her neck.

oh brother

Just clever. You’re clever and you’re sort of, oh, well, I mean to look at—” “Handsome?” suggested Elphaba. “Dashing?” “You’re fun to look at,” decided Galinda. Boq’s face fell. “Fun?” he said.

But, thank Lurline, she’s got a job,

#employment

between your Miss Elphie and my erstwhile friends here, we have no real hope of friendship at all. Shall we organize a duel and kill each other instead? Count off ten paces, turn and shoot? It would save so much bother.” But Galinda didn’t approve of such joking.

He’s religious,” said Elphaba, and made the circling palms gesture that indicated you could grind millstone against millstone all you liked, but there wasn’t any quern in the land that could produce flour if there was no grain to grind.

*pantomiming aliens taking over the strip mall*

Or it may be perceived to be reversible, which is just as bad. In the interim, while sorcerers are at work experimenting with charms and spells, the Animals lose their rights, one by one. Just slowly enough so that it’s hard to see as a coherent political campaign.

She is my world,” he answered. “Your world is too small if she is it.”

You can’t criticize the size of a world. I can’t help it and I can’t stop it and I can’t deny it.”