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

by Gregory Maguire

The Witch sighed. “You may be right. You know, I’m getting used to stiff muscles in the morning. Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit forming too. A stiffness of the attitude. I keep hoping that the Wizard will be toppled in my lifetime, and this aim seems to be at odds with happiness. I suppose I can’t take on avenging the death of a sister I didn’t get on all that well with anyway.”

I relish this quote from E. M. Forster, an apologetic about the limits and the range of his writing life: “My defense at any Last Judgment would be, ‘I was trying to connect up and use all the fragments I was born with.’ ”