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

by Gregory Maguire

She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet.

She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.

“Please, it is Galinda. The proper old Gillikinese pronunciation, if you don’t mind.”

Galinda didn’t often stop to consider whether she believed in what she said or not; the whole point of conversation was flow.

His wife, Sarima, the childhood bride grown up and grown fecund—their three children.

Take care of yourself and beware high connections with bastards, because when the revolution comes there won’t be mercy for toadying ass-lickers.”

Fiyero felt the sudden longing, again, for his own cold and distant children.

Though bruised by their particular family life—and who wasn’t?—in his memory Irji, Manek, and Nor managed more integrity than these hothouse scions of a family on the make.

Was it an accident I saw that, Fiyero wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes. Or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?

But the vision of the battered Bear cub haunted him. He held Elphie the tighter,

“You mean you’ll make me hard? I’m already hard.” “Stop. Stop.” “Oh you wicked woman, you have bewitched me again, look, it has a mind of its own—”

the Dragon of Time created the sun and the moon, and Lurline cursed them and said that their children wouldn’t know their own parents, and then the Kumbric Witch came along and the flood, the battle, the spilling of evil in the world.

One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her—is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if

so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”

Elphie had come to think, back in Shiz, that as women wore cologne, men wore proofs: to secure their own sense of themselves, and thus to be attractive. But surely evil was beyond proof, just as the Kumbric Witch was beyond the grasp of knowable history?

They know I am a beast who chooses magical incarceration as a human over the dangerous liberty of my own powerful form.

“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis,” she said, “those who are the most themselves are the victims.”

“Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”

For the first time, Elphie wished that Liir had at least an undertone of green in his skin.

It didn’t matter how crippled Nessarose was; she would always be more than Elphaba, always. She would always mean more.

“Hush, you useless boy, before I remove your testicles with my foot.”

People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.” He sighed. “It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”

No one controls your destiny. Even at the very worst—there is always choice.

“Evil isn’t a thing, it’s not a person, it’s an attribute like beauty . . .” “It’s a power, like wind . . .” “It’s an infection . . .” “It’s metaphysical, essentially: the corruptibility of creation—”

Under cover of darkness the Witch slipped away on her broom, and saw to it that the suffering soldier died at once.