Elphaba Quotes

“Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“It's just life, so keep dancing through.”
― Stephen Schwartz, Wicked: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical

“Give me something to go on, here. What kind of black magic are we talking? Elphaba,Wicked Witch of the West-type stuff or Slytherin-type stuff?”
― Chloe Neill, Hard Bitten

“Why should I keep myself so safe?” he asked her, but he was almost asking himself. What is there in my life worth preserving? With a good wife back there in the mountains, serviceable as an old spoon, dry in the heart from having been scared of marriage since she was six? With three children so shy of their father, the Prince of the Arjikis, that they will hardly come near him? With a careworn clan moving here, moving there, going through th same disputes, herding the same herds, as thy have done for five hundred years? And me, with a shallow and undirected mind, no artfulness in word or habit, no especial kindness toward the world? What is there that makes my life worth preserving?

“I love you,” said Elphaba.

“So that’s that then, and that’s it,” he answered her and himself. “And I love you. So I promise to be careful.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I wouldn't mind leaving myself behind if I could, but I don't know the way out.”
― Gregory Maguire

“I like the sound of words, but I don't ever really expect my slow, slanted impression of the world to change by what I read.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“The Witch was too much afraid of the dark to dare go in Dorothy's room at night to take the shoes, and her dread of water was greater than her fear of the dark.”
― L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“In her time Nor Tigelaar had faced insurrectionists and collaborationists and war profiteers. She'd endured abduction and prison and self-mutilation. She'd sold herself in sex not for cash but for military information that might come in handy to the resistance, and in so doing she'd come across a rum variety of human types.”
― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

“Do good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?”
― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

“Not old enough to feel like an adult , really, but old enough to look like one, and to know the distinction between being carefree and careless.”
― Gregory Maguire

“They did the best they could. Besides I was hardly a stranger. I had known your grandmother. We were like this." She twined her second and third fingers together as if they might strangle each other.”
― Gregory Maguire, Out of Oz

“Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, ‘Once in the middle of a forest lived an old witch’ or ‘The devil was out walking one day and met a child,’ " Said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some education as well as grit. "To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it always is. 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 the devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“Perhaps he just didn't have the feeling for faith. It seemed to be a kind of language, one whose gnarled syntax needed to be heard from birth, or it remained forever unintelligible. But he wished he had a faith now, some scrap for something: for elphaba was dead, and to act as if the world were no more changed than if some branch of a tree had snapped off- well, it didn't seem right.”
― Gregory Maguire

“The horizon was frosted with a greenish smear, as if ranks of campfires from distant tribes had divined the news already and were burning an homage to Elphaba before the sun could set on the day of her death.
He could smell her in the collar of the cape, and he wept for the first time.”
― Gregory Maguire

“You've answered your question already. Where am I now? I am here, now. That's where I am. Now. If you don't understand, turn yourself around and you speak to the past and speak to the future. What you say matters. What you do matters. Love whom you will, cherish them while you have the time, don't give an inch when the bullies kick at your stilts. Kick back, and then give them a poultice if you've hurt them. The past and future are just window dressing. Where I am is here. I'm busy with a potion that seems to come with this distracting side effect and I better make some corrections before I start hearing violins in the water closet and seeing comets in the chowder. Do you have anything else, or is this just chatter? I hardly think my younger self worth the cost of conversation. Didn't have much to say then and have less to add now, after all this so-called living.”
― Gregory Maguire, The Witch of Maracoor