Egg & Spoon Quotes

“Ambition without direction is like milk without a cup.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“With all those stars in the sky, why isn't there enough light for us to see by? We stumble like blinded sheep.'

'As you can see, it is clouding over. The stars can't pierce the gloom; they just wait it out. That isn't the stars fault. It is their custom to stay heavenly.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Think of egg and spoon. If there is an egg, well, fine. You eat. Unless you use your spoon to hold the egg out of my reach. Does being in possession of a spoon give you more right to the egg?”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“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”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“As an old friend of mine once said when I brought him some interesting brownies, ‘You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes,’” she replied. “Haven’t you read your Maimonides?”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Now we'd help her if we could. We can't. So we're helping you. That's all that most of us who are not Tsars or witches can manage to do.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Elena had always felt like the center of her own world - who doesn't? The world arranged itself around her like petals around the stem of a flower. This way the meadows, that way the woodland. Over here, the baryn's estate, out there, the hills that hug the known world close and imply a world at beyond. She could never come up with the edge of a world, because it always kept going on beyond. She moved the center of the world as she walked. The world was balanced on her head.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“It seems there is no shortage of regret among the young -- but then, they are young, they make mistakes. They have time to correct them and the courage to admit their failings aloud.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Perplexity isn’t as noble as conviction, but perhaps more good is done in the name of muddling through uncertainty than is done hacking away with the righteous sword of self-confidence.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“That’s the beginning of heroism, the decision to try.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Ravens aren’t usually nocturnal, but hunger can be.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“No doubt Noah offered his wife that olive branch. Forty days in a boat with those animals to clean up after? A peace offering likely all that stood between their marriage and bloody murder.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Furniture!" bellowed the witch. "Tables, bathtub, the lot of you. It's time to go out in the world and seek your fortunes, if that's your hope." There was a crashing sound as all the furniture went and tried to hide under the bed, and the bed tried to hide under itself.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“If you’re ever dragged from your chambers at midnight, blindfolded and gagged, without being told whether you’re off to a firing squad or a surprise birthday party, you’ll find that you turn and return to that pivotal moment.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Being normal isn't that miserable."
"Try it for a thousand years in a row, and you'll be grateful for a little zaniness.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Yes, freedom is magnificent. But freedom is hard work.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Listen, we’re all trapped in our own lives. You, me, everyone we’ve ever met.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“She added, perhaps to herself, "You have to become old and ugly before anyone listens to you, and then they don't, because you're ugly and old.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“As Solomon said in the Old Book, if two women squabble over which of them is the mother of a certain infant, the way to solve the problem is to cut the baby in half and share the baby in parts.” “That’s revolting.” “Is it? I always wondered if that baby was a colicky brat and both women were really trying to pawn it off on the other one.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“One should see the world, and see himself, as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed, the scale is tipped to the good — he and the world are saved. When he does one evil deed, the scale is tipped to the bad — he and the world are destroyed.’” “Interesting. Who said that, your grandmother?” “Maimonides. The great Jewish scholastic.” “I didn’t know you read Jewish philosophers.” “It is said, ‘You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.’” “And who said that?” “Also Maimonides.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Though Elena lived in full faith about matters fabulous, she’d never expected to come upon evidence. She suspected that exposure to holy magic was the exclusive right of royalty. It takes a princess to come upon the wise man in the wood, or the talking wolf with a thorn in his paw, or something else useful and good. Even if a princess is switched at birth and raised humbly by starving stepparents, she deserves the luck she inevitably finds. Her diadem may be invisible, but magic always notices it.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“The witch turned this way and that, "I think I've kept my figure, don't you?" she asked Mewster.
"Who else would want it?"
"Don't be snarky." She batted her eyelashes at her reflection. "I do believe I have my mother's eyes."
"Maybe it's time you give them back. Your mother's bee dead since the reign of Oleg the Incontinent.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Being vulnerable to desolation also arises from being unable to picture a set of choices with which to change your lot in life”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Day after day in the season of disaster, it can be hard to recognize a chance in fortune when it comes.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“In my raveling thoughts I flew away, as if my spirit were nestled in the breast feathers of some passing hornbill or waxwing.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Her voice is hoarse. She’s caught a catarrh from that dreadful draft.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Society...has taken up on itself the general arrangemnet of the whole system of spoons”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“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.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“Nothing that is spiritual can fail to shine. Of course we can’t see it directly, because the shadow it casts is just another kind of light. You have to look sideways to see it, but once you see it, you can never un-see it. It is the light you see in the faces of children.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon

“It seems there is no shortage of regret among the young — but then, they are young, they make mistakes. They have time to correct them and the courage to admit their failings aloud. Adults should try it. But frankly, I think it’s a miracle that adults can manage to speak to one another at all, and that the entire species doesn’t take a universal vow of silence. Some days I wish it would.”
― Gregory Maguire, Egg & Spoon