top of page
"Don't let me get sappy on you, but when you get right down to it, every collection of letters is a magic spell, even if it's a moronic proclamation by the Emperor. Words have their impact, girl. Mind your manners. I may not know how to fly but I know how to read, and that's almost the same thing."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Literacy quotes

"Has it ever struck you as odd, or unfortunate, that today, when the proportion of literacy is higher than it has ever been, people should have become susceptible to the influence of advertisement and mass propaganda to an extent hitherto unheard of and unimagined?"

"Illiteracy is simply the inability to read and write."

"A book won't move your eyes for you like TV or a movie does. A book won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it. It won't do the work for you. To read a good novel well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it-everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is a collaboration, an act of participation. No wonder not everybody is up to it."

"The highest paid Americans read an average of two to three hours per day. The lowest paid Americans don't read at all......58% of adults never read another book after they leave high school-including 42% of university graduates......43.6% of American adults read below the 7th grade level... they are functionally illiterate... fully 50% of high school graduates cannot read their graduation diplomas, nor fill out an application form for a job at McDonald's..."

"Illiterate people should only be charged for the photographs, when buying a newspaper."

"Don't you think it's better to continue reading than to just close the book?"
Explore more quotes by Gregory Maguire

"Do good though, will you?" She blinked brightly at the green girl. "If not for your parents or your grandmother, then for me?"

"It isn't hard to find evil in this world. Evil is always more easily imagined than good, somehow."

"A world emerging, daily, out of nothing, a world that we trust to resemble what we've seen previously. We should know better."

"Nothing in the Grimmerie on how to depose a tyrant - nothing useful... Nothing there that described why men and women could turn out so horrible. Or so wonderful - if that ever happens anymore."

"The real thing about evil, you figure out one side of it - the human side, say - and the eternal side goes into shadow. Or vice versa. The real disaster of this inquiry is that it is the nature of evil to be secret."

"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."

"I have always felt like a pawn... My skin color's been a curse, my missionary parents made me sober and intense, my school days brought me up against political crimes against Animals, my love life imploded and my lover died, and if I had any life's work of my own, I haven't found it yet, except in animal husbandry, if you could call it that."
bottom of page